Dartington College of Arts

An enjoyable afternoon spent teaching a group of second year theatre students at Dartington College of Arts near Totnes. Totnes is unlike any other town I know of in Britain. It has a deep affinity for the alternative and so was a welcoming part of the world for someone like me, practising an art that most consider, if they consider it all, not very relevant and definitely not mainstream.

Misha Myers, who had kindly invited me down to teach, explained that the college is going through something of a transitory period. It is a wonderful place and I do hope it has a bright future. The students that I met seem to have the energy to help with that, although I'm not sure if that was drawn from the inspirational surroundings or their apparently bottomless supply of Red Bull.

We spent most of the time walking outside, looking for the usual suspects of sun, shadows, tree shape, moss and lichen growth, tree trunks, mud colour...

Our three hours together finished in my favourite way. I was able to tell a group who had no previous navigation experience that they were now amongst the top 1% of natural navigators in the UK.

SatNav Peaks?

During a mild tidying effort this morning I came close to throwing out the Jan/Feb issue of Navigation News, but then spotted something that I had originally overlooked. A news item that hinted that the role of GPS in our lives may be waning:

'Investment bank Goldman Sachs has voiced the concern that 2009 could usher in several years of decline in the portable navigation device market. It made the comment while moving stocks in Garmin, one of the leading satnav manufacturers, to its 'conviction sell' list.'

I was mistaken. Unfortunately the reason it gave was not that everyone was switching to 'NatNav', but that smartphones were increasingly being fitted with navigation functions. Perhaps as this trend kicks in we can look forward to the sight of fat lorries wedged in narrow country lanes and people wedged inbetween trees too!

Pendulums and Pigeonholes

One of the things that I love about running my courses is that I'm guaranteed to learn something too, but because of the diverse backgrounds of those that attend I can never guess what area it will be in. Over the past few courses I have learnt something about drumlins, Foucault's pendulum, moles and sewage smells. This is a subject that is wonderfully difficult to pigeonhole, which reminds me...

The Geographical magazine asked me today whether I considered myself a geographer.

I gave the following, slightly long-winded answer:

'Am I a geographer? Good question, but no short answer I'm afraid. My niche has a lot of geography in it, but is probably not part of what the academic geographical world would consider its domain. Natural navigation sits astride many fields including geography, meteorology, natural science and astronomy, to name a few.

However, my recent trip to Libya had a stronger geographical bias than some of my work, focusing as it did on one part of the Sahara. There was some physical geography, mainly sand dune shape relative to wind, but some anecdotal human geography also, from informal interviews with the Tuareg. As part of my preparation for the trip I bought and studied a very old back issue of the Geographical Journal (Vol 35, No. 4 Vol 10 from 1910).'

Changing tack again...

I have had a conversation with Rita Gardner, Director of the RGS, in the past about what geography itself actually is. Her answer, if I recall correctly, centered around understanding change, but she had some sympathy for those that struggled to pin it down.

Perhaps interesting subjects evade pigeonholing, or maybe there are just people (polymaths/rebels/misfits?) that find such subjects alluring. Those annoying people that cannot keep their blog entries on one subject for example.

Subtle shades

A fresh peach of a dawn this morning. The contrails in the first photo have a clear southeast track to them which is not unexpected as there's lots of civilisation to the distant southeast of Sussex and relatively little in other distant directions.

Dawn light always feels very different to sunset light. I use the word feel deliberately, because the actual light and colour differences are often subtle. Even if they look similar our normal sleep patterns and lifestyles, combined with the temperature differences mean that we rarely look at a sunset and dawn with similar sensations. If we are in a familiar place we know where to expect morning or evening light, but even mid-Atlantic robbed of lots of other stimuli they feel massively different, one heralding an end to cold and the other respite from sweltering.

But do they actually look different? Yes. The familiar pinks, oranges and reds can often be found more intensely at sunset than at dawn, but why? The colours of both dawn and sunset are caused by the light travelling through more of the earth's atmosphere at the start and end of the day, which leads to the colours not at the red end of the spectrum being scattered - effectively filtered out. How does that make sunset different in appearance from dawn? Well the early evening air is different to the early morning air, it is warmer, more turbulent and there are more dust and pollutant particles in it. These factors combine to accentuate the filtering effect and so sunsets often appear redder than sunrises.

Lunar Lancaster

A Lancaster uses the moon to navigate at Goodwood Revival last weekend. Maybe not, but nice shot by Ben Davis.

Coconuts Navigation

'Sagur, a spirit and chief, lived on the island of Pulap with his daughter, Inosagur. As she bathed in the lagoon before the canoe house one morning, she beheld a rainbow. It became a spirit, Anumwerici, which came to her. The spirit had eaten all the inhabitants of Truk and Naminuoito; now he intended to eat the people of Pulap, too.

But Sagur told his daughter to fetch a little piece of taro and a small drinking coconut. Although Anumwerici complained this would not be enough, each time he tipped the cup containing the taro to his mouth it was refilled. the same thing happened with the drinking coconut. Anumwerici ate and drank his fill. Never, he said, had he been so satisfied.

In gratitude he taught Inosagur navigation. He placed her in a small coconut tree and by magic made it grow above the clouds. Inosagur could see all the islands, all the creatures of pookof, and all the reefs, banks, and shoals...'

From 'The Last Navigator', by Stephen Thomas.

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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.

Top Secret

There is a scene in the 80s spoof movie Top Secret where Val Kilmer is busy painting the scene from a moving train. We later see the result of his work: a blur of green.

I was reminded of this as we made our regular short and longer drives around the Brittany countryside. We covered 1500 miles in just over a fortnight and the number of times that the trees yielded all their navigational secrets to me in our moving car were vastly outnumbered by sights of leaves and branches blurring into one. Sometimes the collective sight of trees leaning to the east from the wind, or the rare silhouette detectable through summer foliage gave an excellent snapshot. All too often however the green of summer made things trickier.

I reminded myself of the bleeding obvious one one occasion as I allowed my curiosity about a tree that appeared to lean in two directions simultaneously to distract me from the road. It was easier for this to happen in rural south Brittany as the number of cars was so few, but no less dangerous for it. I resolved, once again, to save scrutiny of the detail until I was a passenger or better still parked. I think the law forbidding use of holding mobile phones while driving is probably a good one, but it does open a can of worms. Should the holding of sandwiches also be banned and what about looking at trees? If we have learned anything about our politicians over the last years it is surely that we must not give them ideas about new ways to restrict our lives. So best keep this blog strictly hush, hush.

Nature and Vomit

Our summer holiday was at last beginning and all the joys and trepidations of a family outing with small children concentrated themselves into the lower section of the fast ferry from Poole to St Malo in Brittany.

Rather unoriginally, I have always viewed seasickness as a mixture of the mental and the physical. I have seen war veterans reduced to blubbering wrecks and watched young children play snap through a howler. Oh the mysteries of the inner ear and the mind. Although I have been very queasy hundreds of times during travel, I am rarely sick. This is not always a good thing and has been much to my regret on occasion, as the old saying goes,

'There are two types of seasickness, the type where you are afraid you are going to die and then the type where you are worried you are not.'

At least getting it all out gives you a few moments relief from the torment.

The fast catamaran is more of a challenge in this area than the slower ferry, but the weather was being kind. There were inevitably still those who suffered a little. On seeing a middle-aged woman leaning wearily against a wall near the ladies I wondered if I might be able to help. I considered explaining to her about the fascinating relationship between wind and water. The subtle interplay of ripples, waves and swell. I decided against it and instead ordered an enormous sausage, yorkshire pudding and gravy combination from the canteen.

Good Day Out for the Missus

HRH the Duke of Edinburgh was kind enough to take time out to present me with a Royal Institute of Navigation Award this afternoon.

At the reception afterwards he spent a little time chatting with me and a lot longer in deep conversation with Mrs G. He was charming, funny and 'sparkly' apparently, whatever that means.

Smell Power

Stumbled across a bit of a gem this evening. Marion Owen, 'master gardener', describing the moment she decided to become a gardener at the end of a long passage from Guam to Seattle.

If navigation is about where we are and where we are going, then the senses have a bigger part to play than many realise, and not just physically. Marion's passage about a passage beautifully illustrates that honing our senses can get us to our destination in more ways than one. She found land and a new career.


Here are some excerpts:

'Wall-to-wall ocean, especially in the warm tropics, does something to your senses...

...salt crystals form on the decks and railings--even your skin-- like granules of sugar. With the acrid smell of ocean water and sweat, always sweat, mixed with suntan lotion and more salt air, your nose is dulled with monotony...

Leaning against the metal railing like race horses at the starting gate, we peered at the horizon, straining to see land.

I smelled it hours before I saw it. Green. Chlorophyll. Leaves. Land. The round smell was sweet and full.

The smell of land triggered more than tears of joy. It told me that it was time to take a new road in life; to find a new job. Within a year I'd moved to Kodiak Island and followed a compelling urge to learn everything I could about gardening.'