The natural Navigation: The Right Course, Naturally

For the love of God, spare us from any more blog titles like that, you are thinking. But persevere, there is a point to it. Somewhere.

I have just spent a fun 24 hours near Abergavenny, on Sugar Loaf Mountain (to give the big hill it’s superior title). I was joining some of the BBC Wales team.

The day reminded me just how easy it is to avoid the crowds. If work and other more important things allow, then the start and end of the day are the times to be on mountains, up to a certain altitude anyway. I can remember cuddling a friend in the lee of an igneous rock outcrop a few hundred feet below the summit of Mt Rinjani in Lombok, Indonesia. Not a twin bedroom, I hasten to add. We shivered violently in wet clothes praying that the dawn’s sun would get…

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Another very enjoyable Beginner’s Guide to Natural Navigation course at West Dean College on Saturday. There were sailors, walkers, a forager and an army officer among the ever-varied student backgrounds. My thanks to all for coming.

Last night, shortly after 10.30, I took this photograph of the moon rising above the woods and emerging from behind thin clouds. It looks very much like a full moon, but is actually one day after full, a waning moon. It does highlight the difficulty of judging the phase of the moon accurately.

From an aesthetic perspective there is no need to be able to judge the moon’s phase, but if you are trying to use the ‘phase method’ of finding direction from the moon then it is vital. I go into a lot of detail of this method in the book, because it is very satisfying but no less challenging. In…

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A thick cold damp mist is bogged in over the South Downs this morning. I haven’t been out much this week as I seem to have been zooming up and down the A roads to the Royal Geographical Society and back. On Monday night it was the last president, Prof Sir Gordon Conway’s farewell lecture followed by a black tie dinner with the new President, Michael Palin CBE. Good food for mind and body and, as always at the RGS, great company and stories round the tables.

Yesterday I gave my Beginner’s Guide to Natural Navigation course for another wonderfully diverse gang. A smattering of walkers, pilots and sailors, but among them a filmmaker, mum, banker, psychiatrist, gardener, construction engineer and designer.

The RGS is always a fun place to spend the day, but it had an unusual and slightly surreal feel to it yesterday as there was a…

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On Saturday I was invited to give an introductory natural navigation course on one of the walks organised by Louise Gorst. Louise has been leading walks in East Sussex for four years and has earned a large and loyal following for her ‘Soles and Souls’ walking days.

Twenty-one of us headed out on a glorious circuit from the ‘Sussex Ox’ pub in Milton Street, near Eastbourne. We headed up Wilmington Hill and stopped along the way to look very briefly into the use of the sun, wind, clouds, land, sea, trees and buildings. One of the great things about natural navigation is that it never gets between a walker and the outdoor experience,  it never detracts from fantastic views or great dollops of sunshine, but helps us to connect with them in a new way.

Ideal for those who like their walking to come with a sense of reflection…

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What sort of person comes on your courses?

All sorts! Those who enjoy fresh air and have an open mind. So far there have been artists, soldiers, writers, walkers, Navy officers, drainage engineers, lawyers, physicists, ecologists, accountants, marketing people, IT people, financiers, an RAF Navigator, fathers, mothers, daughters, sons, farmers, pilots, actors, sailors, builders, midwives… No astronauts yet, but it’s still early days.

A robin’s trademark red breast has always struck me as one of nature’s less enthusiastic attempts at camouflage. We went for a family walk in the woods yesterday and this particular robin was very friendly. Even so, when I tried to take a picture of him I sometimes lost him from view as he blended with the leaves.

Blue water sailors are aware that birds can be used in finding land, but walkers tend to overlook one of the simplest of navigational clues. The more friendly the birds, the closer you are to civilization. It’s not just birds either, town foxes are becoming positively insolent.