The Dales Turtle
Once I’ve got my bearings in a new area I like to look for features that will act as friendly reminders. This woodland on the…
Tag: plants
Weather to Go East
The two pictures above show two sides of the same bridleway signpost on the South Downs Way. The arrows both point east and there is…
Jurassic Coast
My thanks to Richard, who sent in this picture from a lad’s walking weekend along the Jurassic Coast. He was given a private course as…
Sun on the Beech
Last night I went for a run through some beech woodland. The perfect tonic after twelve hours straight on the book.
Welcome to Lichen Land
Two nights ago the strong winds brought an ivy-ravaged sycamore down into our garden, destroying two fences and killing an apple sapling in the process.…
Flowers and Blazes
A walk in the woods yesterday revealed some natural and unnatural clues. This primrose, the only one in the area, was unsurprisingly in a south-facing…
Green Tinged Trees
Picking up on a theme I touched on a few days ago, it is remarkable and delightful how differently we all see the world. Yesterday…
A Tale of Two Tree Stumps
I ran a small private course yesterday and enjoyed a wonderfully ironic moment. It was almost embarrassing. The first half of the day was spent…
The Generous Trees
The more I study natural navigation, the more indebted I feel to trees. There are few environmental conditions that they do not make some effect…
Long-living lichen and other tongue twisters
We all see a lot of lichens, but we pay them little attention. They are not endowed with classical beauty and yet their absence can…
Roll up, Roll up, Get Your Wild Places Here!
A Christmas present that I hesitate to share, or even share the idea of… is ‘Britain and Ireland’s Best Wild Places’ book. It does exactly…
The Lichen Few
A little over a month ago I promised to look at how trees have brown or ‘tanned’ looking lichen on their north side in this…
The Many Faces of Chichester Cross
Chichester Cross is a slightly mysterious stone construction at the heart of my home town. It has been around for five hundred years or more…
Leonardo’s Tree Compass
Leonardo da Vinci is among the great and the good to have noted that tree growth is not symmetrical, it is heavily influenced by the…
Heat, Wind and Chillies
When talking about heat and wind in the context of chillies, there is a risk that we might start to think some very un-navigational thoughts……
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…
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…