The Times helped launch the new courses with a travel news snippet today.

A Rich Soup

I regularly find myself balancing the scientific explanations for something, natural observations of the same thing, historical accounts and even folklore. It can be a rich mix. This morning I came across a fun site that gives a good flavour of how diverse this subject can be in its page about the winter solstice.

Navigation Courses

A blog is not a blog without an occasional rant, so...

It strikes me that the world of navigation training has strayed a little off course. If you type "navigation courses" into Google you get nearly five and a half million results. I'd be prepared to wager that more than five million of these are associated with 'traditional' training. To my mind the majority of these are falling between two stools. They focus on using tools but not the best ones. The two ends of the spectrum are electronics and nature. Nobody, myself included, argues that natural methods are more accurate than electronics when it is working. Equally, nobody in their right mind would want to challenge someone holding a working GPS to a position-fixing competion using compass back-bearings. Where am I going with this?

Well, why do we concentrate the vast majority of our training and learning in the area that is now neither the most accurate nor the most resilient? Electronic navigation is the most accurate when it works and natural navigation cannot break. I am not suggesting that we don't continue to learn how to use compasses and other tools that are less accurate and not immune to failure, I am just questioning whether we should have so many eggs in those baskets at the expense of natural awareness. Would we not be better off spending a small fraction of that time studying the world around us without any tools at all?

Equal joys, Different Reasons

Everywhere I go at the moment I am reminded of cycles. Not the type that the Dutch and Boris Johnson are so keen on, no, the natural cycles. The countryside is abuzz at the moment. My sons and I love it when we come across a combine harvester and tractor at work like this. I get excited because it reminds me that we are well past the summer solstice and can start looking forward to the autumnal equinox. Their reasons are probably better.

Tide and the Big Clock

Time and navigation have a cosy relationship, as John Harrison, inventor of the chronometer that cracked the longitude problem in the 18th Century would attest. The sun, earth, moon and planets and stars have at times been seen as cogs in a huge clock.

So many natural phenomena take their orders from these bodies and tide is one of the best known of these. I took this photo of the tide running past a cardinal off Jersey this weekend. The cardinal is an easterly one, signalling that the safer water lay to the east of it. But could it tell us anything else? With two pieces of information, time and tide table, we can discern others such as the speed of the water and its direction. If we had no other references: no sight of land, no chart, no compass, no GPS... that small patch of water could reveal not only where the safe water was but also which way we were heading, all by looking into the workings of the big clock.

A navigator who knew the local waters well could probably gauge most of this just by looking at a rock sticking out of the water and checking the sun and moon.

Churches and Runways

I have found myself at airports a lot recently and it occurred to me that there is not very much to inspire those interested in nature about them in general. It does sometimes take a bit of lateral thinking to spot the clues in places like that.

Some man-made structures can give us a clue to help us on our way until nature comes to our aid again. Churches are a good example. A lot of churches are aligned East-West and this can offer a short term hand if all else is proving confusing, not unusual in a built-up area. The problem with a lot of artificial clues like this though is that they are very short-lived, they offer a clue for a few seconds or minutes at best, but then disappear out of sight and leave the navigator on their own again. Airports, with a little lateral and logical thinking, go one better than this...

Most people know that runways have their headings printed in big white numerals at either end. 02/20 runway runs roughly NNE/SSW. Pilots and plenty of others are also aware that this is because the aircraft that use them must take off and land into wind and so runways are usually aligned into the prevalent wind. There are a lot of W/E and SW/NE runways in Britain.

It is only a short leap from there, but one that few make, to realise that the trees in the area are very likely to reflect this prevailing wind direction in their own shape. More importantly they are likely to do it well beyond the visual range of the runway itself. Next time you look at a runway it's worth remembering that it might be offering you a finely tuned natural compass for the local area.

Slippery Shadows

Trying to be positive when there have only been a brace of sunbeams all August so far, I have been tinkering with the overcast shadow method. The theory being that plenty of light filters through the overcast clouds and that a thin blade can be used to average the source of this light, ie. the sun. It is better than nothing, sometimes, but it is important to be aware that the shadow will be thrown opposite the brightest light and there are no guarantees that this is where the sun is. Uneven cloud or tree cover are just two of the things that can throw it completely.

Rain Clouds and Wrongwayitis

I've been reading accounts from British light aircraft pilots who have experienced difficulty in orienting themselves when flying in the southern hemisphere. The reason for this 'wrongwayitis' is fairly well understood and stems from the disagreement, usually subconscious, of where we expect to see the sun relative to our travel and where it actually is.

I was a bit shocked this afternoon when returning from Southampton airport to discover that I was experiencing a similar sensation, a feeling of 'wrongwayitis'. I was driving through heavy rain and the signs told me clearly that I was heading the right way, or roughly east along the M27. There were even natural clues confirming it at the roadside in the shape of trees. Rationally I knew that I was heading the right way and yet the feeling of wrongwayitis persisted for several minutes. A casual glance revealed that the sky was indeed brighter to the north and east, when I would have expected it to be brighter in the southwest. This was the only explanation I could come up with for this feeling, the stark contrast between dark rain clouds in the south and west and the lighter sky in the north and east. Were the other drivers on the M27 at that time experiencing this same feeling? I've no idea, but I'd like to know.

A Breeze

On some days it is easier than others to tell which way the wind blows.

Today we enjoyed a nice 30kts/Force 7/35mph/56kph, depending how you like your porridge.

The Friendly Moon

Last night was one of those occasions where the moon was the natural navigator's best option. At about 10pm the sky overhead was overcast with broken clouds down to nearer the horizon. The western glow of dusk was gone and the only objects that could be seen were Jupiter and the three-quarter Moon. The cloud meant no Polaris, and the bright moon in the only patch of open sky blotted out the other stars. The Moon plays hard to get at first but on nights like this it can be a very good friend.

Spicy Coincidences

The Gooley family spent Saturday in the lovely surroundings of West Dean enjoying their annual Chilli Fiesta. It was both an enjoyable and serendipitous occasion.

My gardening skills are usually limited to lawnmowing and leaving a small wake of destruction with a strimmer. About the only area where I have had any success with bringing new lives into the garden rather than violently curtailing old ones is in growing chillis. I have ten different varieties grown from seed and although not all bearing fruit, yet, they are all notably alive.

The West Dean Chilli Fiesta is a bit of Mecca to amateur growers like myself so it is a rather bizarre coincidence that West Dean is also where my courses in October are being held. Something I mulled over as the August rain ran off my nose and my mouth burned with a rather excellent jalapeno and papaya sauce.

Agoraphobics Look Away Now

A friend has just sent over a thought for the day:

'Put three grains of sand in a vast cathedral, and the cathedral will be more closely packed with sand than space is with stars.' - Sir James Jeans (1877 - 1946)

It doesn't help us find our way, but it is a reminder to be grateful if we do find a star that helps.

(Thanks Anthony!)

Chichester Lightning

The skies above the Natural Navigator last night as he tried to devise an ingenious new method to catch a pair of errant chickens.

(Picture taken by Ben Davis of Chichester Design, who designed this webite.)

Slightly Fickle Moss

Having spent the morning organising images for upcoming courses, I was reminded of a regular problem with learning anything practical from nature. There is a real tendency to bias. By which I mean when we are learning something new there is a great temptation to either make our observations fit our predictions, or to overlook things until we find something that looks the way we want it to.

Moss on trees and buildings is a great example of this. The popular notion is that moss will grow on the north side. This is sometimes true, but often not and for a good reason. The harsh truth is that moss doesn't care where north is at all. Moss will grow where moisture is retained and this is determined by rain, sun, wind and other factors. If it was only about the sun then it would be a far better indicator of north.

To avoid putting too much of a dampener, forgive me, on the spirits of those who like to cling to the north moss theory, here is a nice picture taken near my home looking east at a tree trunk. Lots of moss on the north side, next to none on the south.

The Sound of Humidity

It has been an interesting week so far. The website went live a couple of weeks ago, but this week has been about raising awareness. I've emailed lots of close friends and lots of people I haven't seen or spoken to in years. It is one of the nice surprises of launching a new venture, particularly if you're bad at staying in touch like me, it helps reconnect you with old friends.

On a completely different subject, last night I was a little weary and was trying to find excuses so that I didn't have to mow the lawn. It was sunny, but there were dark clouds on the horizon. Perhaps if I waited long enough it would become too wet to mow? Finally I fired the lawnmower up and got to work on our small patch of grass that sits between the rebellious chickens* and the house. Soon, to borrow the immortal words of Monty in the immortal film, 'Withnail and I',

'The sky was beginning to bruise.'

The rain clouds were gathering and the first rumble of thunder drowned out the lawnmower. Then something odd happened. Or might have happened. The air became noticeably more humid, nothing odd in that as a thunderstorm approached, no the odd thing was that I thought I could detect a change in sound. It was definitely as though the acoustics of the garden had changed, as if the air was absorbing the sounds and echoes of the lawnmower engine. Deadening them. Can a sudden change in humidity do that? Answers from physicists and others on a postcard please.

* One of the reasons for my weariness was that my wife and I had spent about an hour that day, spread over a dozen unsuccessful attempts, trying to corral our chickens into their new house.

Desert of Information

Back from holiday to me means back to the joys and evils of modern life. In the remotest part of south Brittany where we had chosen to hide from the real world for a fortnight, there were no landline telephones, no newspapers, no TV, no radio, no computers and no internet. We had to learn how to speak to each other again which was not an entirely smooth process. If you haven't tried it recently let me warn you that it is a lot harder than ignoring each other and pretending to text someone.

One of the joys of returning was the ability to access information. One of the evils is being bombarded with the stuff. I decided to focus on the positives last night and used the internet for what it seems best at: unearthing truly obscure bits of information.

I am now the proud owner of a PDF of a downloaded academic article published in 1974 entitled:

'Bedouin Star-Lore in Sinai and the Negev'

Let me treat you to the first two sentences:

'Until the twentieth century the Bedouin of the Sinai peninsula and the Negev desert were no less dependent upon knowledge of the heavenly bodies than their nomadic ancestors of countless generations in the Arabian peninsula. The stars were as vital to a Bedouin trying to find his way in almost featureless stretches of the desert waste as they were to a sailor navigating the open sea.'

Oh the Joys! The Joys!

Waves of Confusion

This morning, as our Land Rover rolled onto the Brittany ferry, or MV Bretagne as she likes to be called, I had a cunning plan. I would use the pretence of work to escape the mayhem that was sure to ensue on our return from our summer holiday. While our young boys tried and generally succeeded to convince their mum that two hours of singing clowns and suspect magic were preferable to another game of 'destroy the duty free shop and then pillage the canteen', I would slip out onto the deck with a notepad and pen.

The wind was SSW about force 5. The speed of the ferry meant that the difference between true and apparent wind was stark and varied significantly depending on whether you stood in the slipstream or behind a break of some sort. The waves, however, did not succumb to such vagaries and marched obediently in line towards their destination. They remained a consistent and reliable indicator of direction from the deck I stood on which must have been a good 50ft up. How did I know? Well, there were plenty of obliging yachts around and their sails confirmed it.

I confess I did spend some minutes trying to read a swell pattern, but they were fruitless - this was the English Channel not Tonga after all.

The uniformity of the waves did appear to break as we passed St Catherine's , but not in any useful way, and by the time Portsmouth was in sight the water was, unsurprisingly, a total mess of mixed ripples, waves and swells. Even a Polynesian would have reached for a GPS confronted with that lot. Although the wind was still a constant and so may have been useful on a much slower boat.

The only other thing worthy of note was the clarity of shadows, wind and current, in the lee of an anchored container ship to the east of Bembridge. From the height of the ferry deck the ease with which I could make out the different lines of wind shadow and tidal current, and their overlap, was refreshing. So much clearer than from the deck of a 32ft yacht, although in the smaller boat their effects are so much more apparent.

Our early evening mooring at Portsmouth was delayed for 20 minutes due to 'extraordinary tidal conditions'. Granted there was a bit of springs about them, but nothing else that I could guess at. Maybe they have a list of these expressions to help cope with operational delays without upsetting people. Perhaps tomorrow's passengers will be late due to 'unusual current patterns'?

We were sitting almost patiently next to another Land Rover on the car deck before disembarking, when a voice from inside it asked me where home was.
'Just along the M and then A27 to Chichester.' I replied. They looked confused.
'Sun on the left until I hit a big road then sun in the mirror until I see a cathedral.' I elucidated. They looked worried for me, but smiled and waved us on our way.