Gen Z Can’t Navigate Without Apps, Study Finds
A Carmoola study of 2,000 UK drivers revealed not only widespread gaps in car maintenance knowledge but also a growing weakness in navigation skills, particularly…
Tag: towns
Start Walking North-West… Finish Facing?
In this video of a stroll through the town of St Ives in Cornwall we are walking north-west at the start. See if you keep…
Which Way is the Wind Blowing?
The video above is taken from St Mary the Virgin’s church rooftop in the town of Rye, East Sussex, UK. Which direction is the wind…
Is this a Sunrise or a Sunset?
Is this a sunrise or sunset? And Why? Spoiler alert… answer below… Moss on the roof suggests that is more likely the north side of…
Some Tips on Home-Hunting in the Tyrol
My thanks to Otta Wenskus for the following tips. They offer practical advice if you are looking for a flat or house near Innsbruck… And…
The Fine Art of Looking at Ugly Walls
Walls that start life looking the same do not stay that way for long. The sun hits exposed south-facing walls hard in the middle of…
How to Navigate with Lombardy Poplars
There are three types of tree in any landscape: friends, guests and rebels. Every tree is native, invasive or planted. Native trees have been part…
Urban Picture Puzzle
This picture was taken near the middle of the day in London. What direction are we looking? Clue: look for the circle and the square.…
Desire Paths
Footpaths are, to state the obvious, established routes for walkers between two points. But paths are born. First one, then two, then more people decide…
The Many Faces of Chichester Cross
Chichester Cross is a market cross – the building that symbolises the heart of the market square in my nearest town of Chichester, West Sussex.…
How to Find Direction Using Tree Bark
The wind, rain and sun do not affect all sides of trees equally. This creates patterns on the trees’ bark that we can use to…
Urban Natural Navigation
The following article was written by Tristan Gooley in October 2011 for the BBC News Online magazine. It caused quite a stir and comments were switched…
How to Cross a Park Like an Explorer
Sherlock Holmes may have felt the mist of the moor under his deerstalker on occasion, but he had a distinct preference for indoor clues over…
Getting from A to B in a City
There are a couple of interesting articles in the latest issue of The Economist. One called, Getting on the Map, is mainly about crowd-sourced mapping…
The Smelliest Clue
One of the natural navigation techniques that ocean sailors have used for centuries is noticing that the incidence of flotsam and jetsam increases, on average,…