The natural Navigation: The Right Course, Naturally

OK, it’s confession time. Again.

I’m just back from a week’s holiday with my wife on the Greek island of Kefalonia. It was our first holiday without the kids for about seven years, which felt bizarre from start to finish. This is the only, admittedly weak, excuse for the navigational lapse that ensued.

In Fiskardo, at the northern end of Kefalonia, we hired a small day-boat and spent many mornings motoring up and down the east coast of Kefalonia. We pursued the not very stressful business of hunting quiet bays and seeking secluded beaches for a swim.

On the fifth morning we putt-putted all the way round the northern Kefalonian coast to a beach at the northern tip of the island called, Dafnoudi beach.

We had spent almost all of the week on the east coast of the Kefalonia looking across the water, to the east, and seeing the beautiful…

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There is a ‘Camping Special’ in today’s Guardian and in it I get to lay an old ghost to rest. The first question I was asked was, ‘What is your favourite camping song?’

I can still remember being at prep school and finding the surname, ‘Gooley’, was proving an unwelcome additional burden to the trials of growing up. Chants of Ging Gang Goolie echoed for what seemed like about two years.

At the time I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to laugh, cry or sing along. If I remember correctly I tackled it with a mix of nonchalance, introspective sulks and racing around trying to punch people on the nose. None of these were very effective and so it is all the more extraordinary that I do have a fondness for this song. However testing those early years were, in a school that made Lord of the Flies…

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Only one of these compasses can be correct, since I took the photo in my garden in the south of England in April, not at the South Pole.

The stick’s shadow should tell you which compass is still accurate and also very roughly what time of day the picture was taken. Which compass is still working, why and when was the picture taken?

The answers will appear here after a few tantalising days!