Learning to Navigate in the Chilterns (Saturday 2 November)

Chris Loy led the second GOC London 'Introduction to Navigation' course on Saturday 2 November. The venue was the Chilterns near Tring, with 11 GOC members participating. Chris initially covered the main features of ordnance survey maps and some key skills of pacing and timing distances. At the beginning of the event, Chris asked us all to check how many paces, and how long it took us, to walk a known distance from the Tring railway bridge to a road junction (which was almost exactly 200 metres). Chris then asked members of the group to lead the way to the lunch stop, which was the Trooper gastropub in Albury. The last time we had visited this venue it had been a rustic country pub, but had since become much posher and more expensive! However the service was friendly and the food tasty. Over lunch we looked at ordnance survey maps in more detail and some other types of maps used by walkers.

After lunch we learned how to take compass bearings and about how this technique would be used in practice. (For some reason people were quite enthusiastic about the concept of getting “red fred into bed”!)…..Again members of the group led us up onto the Chiltern escarpment - this was a job well done, because there were many intersecting paths, and route finding was quite tricky. This heavily wooded part of the Chilterns was ideal for this sort of exercise, because there is very limited forward visibility because of the trees. Chris got the group to navigate to two small ponds that could be seen on the map. By the time we had done those exercises the sun was setting, and realistically given the long journey home, there was not time to go much further afield. Chris decided the best thing to do was to walk by a different route back to the station, using the navigation techniques we had learned. It was by now quite dark and we used head torches to illuminate the maps. However Chris pointed out that it is often better not to use torches for walking in the dark, because then people’s eyes can accommodate to the conditions much better.

I was very impressed with everyone’s enthusiasm and keenness to make sure that they had understood key points. Thanks to Chris and everyone who came along. I am certainly keen to run a similar event again next year.

Andy Fisher

GOC London Co-ordinator

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