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…
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Tag: towns
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…
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,…