How to Make a Compass Out of Sand, Snow or Dust
Whenever you’re on sand or snow, tune in to the direction the most recent winds have been blowing from and you’ll find yourself surrounded by…
Tag: extraordinary
White Out and Prevailing Winds
My thanks to Ginny Howells for coming on a course and for this wonderful email: “I just thought I’d share how I used natural navigation…
Dawn Chorus Going Global
There will be an international collaborative radio dawn chorus programme going out on BBC Radio 4 from about 1am UK time tonight. It runs until…
Ripples, Reflections and Patterns
It can be difficult to see detail in the surface of calm water. To work out what the water is doing, look at the places…
Toponymy in Oman
The Gooley family are just back from a week’s holiday in Oman. It was mostly sun, sand and swimming, but we did venture into the…
The Paperback is Out Today!
The paperback of How to Read Water is out today! (UK) Happy Water Reading! A Sunday Times ‘Must Read’ book A New York Times Bestseller…
The Sneckdown
It is a truth universally acknowledged by town planners that there is no finer word than ‘sneckdown’. After heavy snow, town planners can see the…
The Explorers Club, New York
A huge thank you to everyone who came to my talk at The Explorers Club in Manhattan last night. An amazing place and a brilliant…
Calling All Artists and Writers
Calling All Artists and Writers: You have to check out a place called Joya. Joya is an arts-led field research centre in Almeria and one…
Optical Illusions at Night
The human brain does a lot of things that we’re not aware of. It takes shortcuts and most of the time that saves us time.…
BBC Inside Out – Winter Wonderland
This week I spent a couple of days filming with presenter Natalie Graham and the BBC Inside Out team in Rye and Camber Sands, East…
Our Motives for Moving
I’ve written in the past about the way our motive for travelling will have a bearing on our perception and experience of the journey itself.…
Reflections – A Longer Interview
I’ve been doing a few interviews for US radio stations recently. Typically they last about ten minutes and can only be superficial. Recently I made…
The Direction Ducks Land
My thanks to my fellow Fellows at the Royal Institute of Navigation for drawing my attention to some research that slipped past me a few…
Circumzenithal Arcs
My thanks to Simon Cadman for the following generous email and some great images of some sun dogs and the more rarely-spotted, ‘upside-down rainbow’, also…
Newsflash: Price War
Something of a pre-Christmas price war going on out there at the moment. How to Read Water is being discounted by 75% by some retailers.…
Pin Holes on the Beach
When a wave breaks it pushes foamy water up the beach, this is the ‘swash‘. Some of this water flows back down the beach to…
Still Waters Run Deep
It’s been another week of dashing about in the Land Rover, giving talks about How to Read Water. Henley, Saffron Walden, Southampton… A big, big…
Back from Crete
Just back from a natural navigation expedition in Crete. In summary: a sweaty success. More to follow in email newsletter etc. ———————————- Update: The lessons…