 Good evening everyone and thank you for joining us this evening. We're well for this evening's talk hosted by Alice Brigham and Glenmore Lodge. Delighted to have you along this evening. Thank you for joining us. We've got two sessions as you will know because I think many of you are signed up to both sessions this evenings which is an introduction to navigation and next week session around the same time eight o'clock next Monday, which is sort of next steps to navigation. So big thank you to the guys at Glenmore Lodge for giving up their time this evening to host this session. I think it'll be really, really good and you'll get a lot out of it. So tonight, we are going to be taking questions. There is a Q&A box on Zoom. I'm sure you're all used to using Zoom by now. So please put your questions in there. And we'll try and get to as many will be answered in them live as as John's talk and sorry as Bill's talking and his colleague John will be answering them live so we'll also have some time at the end to answer some questions. Live on camera as well. So the session will last for about 20 to 30 minutes and then we'll have some questions at the end of that. So the so really all that remains for me to do is hand over to Bill and and over to you, Bill really. Thank you. Thanks Mark. Hello everyone and welcome to tonight's and introduction to navigation talk. If you've always been unsure of navigation or perhaps only ever followed someone else around the hills and perhaps felt a bit baffled about what they're doing, then by staring at the map and you're wondering what they're doing then you're in the right place this evening so welcome. Thank you very much for coming along and just to let you know, unlike a normal zoom meeting and we can't see you and you can only see myself the presenter. There is however, as Mark has already mentioned a Q a box to allow you to put questions or comments and please do it. And there's no doubt questions tonight so please don't have any concerns about asking whatever you would like to. This is a place to ask and learn. One of the ones they'll work with at the lodge is also here tonight to keep one eye on the questions and another eye on me, make sure that I don't miss anything and he may well interrupt as if he feels like I'm going off. Let's begin. Why? Why do we need to navigate? Well, I presume the fact that you're here means that you already know the answer to this question or at least have potentially formed your own answer. Being able to navigate is not just for the remote mountains. It can open up the local countryside too. It allows us to have confidence in exploring new places, being able to plan routes that are within our ability, our equipment and our time constraints. A dog walk, a bike ride, a run. The principles of navigation are all the same. When planning a walk, we want to check the weather forecast for the area that we plan to visit. We want to check that it suits the aims of both us and the people we're going with. And we also want to understand the landscape that we plan to journey through. Being able to navigate and understand maps allows us to understand this landscape in detail and allows us to plan a safe and an appropriate day. It's no wonder some folk are put off by learning to navigate. There's a lot of equipment out there, some of it pictured on the left, from traditional mapping compass to GPS and altimeter and phone apps. Things don't always have to be complicated. Perhaps we just need the map. Depending on where you're going, you might want to add some other equipment. For example, for a country path, a local map will probably be enough for more complex terrain or when there might be a lack of visibility than a compass might be needed. Other available devices I've mentioned such as that GPS or phone apps or altimeter can also help that they shouldn't replace the basic navigational skills. Depending on the time of year or how long your day is going to be, a head torch might also be vital. It is part of your navigational equipment because if you can't see and you can't navigate. As I said, it doesn't have to be complicated. Often a look at one of these boards is all that we need to help us along our mini adventure. So if you've ever rocked up to a country car park and looked at this and worked out what way the yellow dots on the map actually take you to, then you've navigated. And the fact that you're here tonight means you navigated successfully. Regardless of the terrain that we're going to be walking in, having a structure to help us with our navigation will help build that confidence we need to navigate properly. You might not be aware of it, but we already have a pretty good navigational structure. Before going on a car trip, for example, we work out what way you need to go and how far it is and how long it's going to take. Whether you're taking the motorway or the back roads and where are you stopping for fuel? What will that journey look like? How will it feel when you're on the way? It doesn't have to be complicated. One of the most important skills, as I mentioned, when it comes to navigation is having confidence. And this structure that you see in the slide before you helps us build confidence and it's all that we actually need. Before a chat about that in any more detail, I'm just going to mention the map here that I'm using for the backgrounds in these slides. There's a lot of information on it, some of it you may know and some of it you may not. Add its simplest, for example, blue is water. And these grid squares showing here on a 1 to 50,000 map are a kilometer. On a 1 to 25,000 map, the grid squares may be a little bit bigger. But again, they will be equal to a kilometer in real life. Contours, these wiggly brown lines tell us and show us the shape of the land. Those join points of equal height. If I was to walk along this contour, I wouldn't be going up or down the hill, but I would be walking around it without losing any height or gaining any. If I wanted to go up or down the hill, like this, then I would have to cross these contour lines at an angle. These grid lines running up and down the way and represent they show you where the north of the map is. So the top of the map always points to north. There may well be many other symbols, words and squiggles on the map that you don't recognize or can't quite remember from your school by geography. But regardless of the type or scale of the map, there should always be a key or a legend somewhere available in the map to help you remember what those symbols mean, so you don't have to memorize everything. I've got three very short videos tonight just to go along with this talk. And the first one is three or four minutes long, and that's this one here from Mountaineering Island. And it should help describe the contour just in a little bit more detail and it's worth just going over. In this short instructional video, I'm going to describe the main mountain features we use to navigate by. It's important that we know how to translate how the feature looks on the land to how the feature will be shown on the map and vice versa. The first feature I'm going to show you is a summit or a top or a spot height. When you're standing on top of this, every direction will go down, and that's its definition. So front, back, left and right all go downhill. The map will show it like this. The second feature I'm going to describe is a valley. The definition of a valley would be uphill on three sides and downhill on one. This is how the valley is shown on the map. The re-entrant is the same shape as a valley, but on a smaller scale. The definition of your re-entrant is uphill on three sides and downhill on one. This is how the re-entrant is shown on the map that the contour line cuts into the slope. The next feature I'm going to show you is a spur, sometimes described as a shoulder of land. When you're standing on a spur and looking down along its backbone, it will be down in front of you, down on either side and uphill behind you. So by definition it will be downhill on three sides and uphill on one. This is how the map shows a spur. A ridge is a line feature joining the dots between summits. The ridge marks out the backbone of the mountain range. The next feature I'm going to show you is a saddle or a cull. So the definition of a saddle is up on two sides and down on two sides. This is how a saddle is shown on the map. Another useful navigation feature is a change of slope. So if you're walking along, you might have a section of ground that's shallow, followed by a steep section, followed by a shallow section. In the foreground you can notice a very obvious change of slope from the flat ground at the bottom to the steep ground going up and alongside the forestry. This is how a change of slope is shown on the map. Here is a map showing all of the features that we've just discussed. I'll stop that there. Thanks very much to Mountiering Island for producing that short video, which has hopefully helped clarify some of the terminology that is associated with maps and contour lines. But onto that structure, what skills should a good navigator have? Well, knowing how to work out the direction, what way should I go? Knowing how to work out the distance, how far will I walk until the end of my walk or to the next junction, for example? Knowing how to work out the duration, how long will this walk take or parts of this walk? And knowing the description of the walk. What I mean by the description is all of above that I've just mentioned, but also what will happen and what will I see and feel along the way? Will it be up, down, flat, steep, gentle? Will we cross a stream, turn right or turn left, etc.? Let's have a look at the direction. Being able to set the map is possible with the most fundamental of skills and navigation and makes working out the direction pretty easy. Here's a simple example. If we're at the end of this arrow here, and we would like to head in this direction, then setting the map will take any accidental errors out of the equation. Let's take how complicated a simple road map can be when it's upside down and you're driving along. To set the map, then I use the ground to ensure that the things on the map match where they are in reality. Here we can see, while continuing to face the direction that I've been travelling, I have turned the map so that the river down on my left is now on the left side of the map. And the path I have came along is behind me pointing towards the back of the map. And the hill on my right hand side is towards the right of the map. This makes it really clear that I want the right hand track in the junction. However, depending on where you are, there are times when it might be more challenging to find features in the land to use to help set the map. Or perhaps, whether I say three paths on the ground, but only two shown in the map. Here we can use the compass to set the map. This is the second last short video in the presentation. Hopefully it will show what I mean. Just occasionally you'll end up at a junction where you're not quite sure which path you need to take. In this case, I've got a three-way junction. So I'll start by setting my map using my compass. I simply turn the map until the red needle on the compass is lined up with the north lines on the map. Then the paths of this junction line up with the map. There's the one I've come down. There's one off to the right and the one heading this way. So I'm going in that direction. Please don't worry if that felt a little rough. With a little bit of practice, that soon becomes second nature. And those videos are available online to refer to at a later time. Okay, so the distance and duration. Are we nearly there yet? Is that the top? How many times have you been asked that? Or indeed, how many times have you asked that of the person that you're with? How many more corners do I have to go around? If we look at this low-level walk around Loch Morley, we can see that it's roughly, if we remember these boxes are a kilometer, it's roughly five kilometers around the Loch. One, two, three, four, five, and perhaps a little bit more. So if it's about five kilometers along the Loch, and if we say we are walking roughly at say three kilometers an hour, then it might only take us one and a half to two hours to do that walk. Even if we're planning and we think we might be walking a little bit faster, it's good to use this slightly slower time because that should help account for any little stops and rest that you might take along the way. However, if you think you might walk a little bit slower, then consider adjusting your guesstimating pace down to perhaps two kilometers an hour. And again, remember to add on some time for rests. The same principle here in the Devil's Staircase section of the West Highland Way, knowing that it is a rough distance of one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight kilometers, it's start to give you an indication of how long your walk will take depending on your speed. Remembering that we can expect to be at a significantly slower pace here than the previous slide, as the path is smaller and the ground will be steeper and more than lightly rougher. Regardless of whatever you think your timings will be, it's very important to reflect back on your timings and adjust as appropriately for the next time. And remember, young kids can add on a lot more time than a narrow path. If we want to measure the distance a little more accurately, particularly for the distances between points in our walk, such as from one track junction to the next, then we can use our compass for this. A compass is not just for working out the direction. The arrow here points to the Romer scale, and you can see on the outside, we have a 1 to 25,000 scale, and here a 1 to 50,000 scale, and a Harvey's 1 to 40,000 map scale here as well. If you have a look at your compass, and you see here it says 1 to 63,360, that is the old inch to a mile scale, and what that tells you is you probably need to buy a new compass. Along here is just simple millimeters. Some people prefer to measure the distance with millimeters and convert using slightly more complicated maths, the actual distance on the ground. If I'd like to know the distance from the track junction here to where it comes into the trees, I can estimate it just using the grid boxes as a reference. So I can see there it's round about half a kilometer. So I'm expecting about 500 meters. If I use the 1 to 50,000 Romer scale on my compass here, I can measure it, zero at the track junction, and you can read here 600 meters to where it enters the trees. So that's not too far off from that initial estimate. This sounds very obvious, but it's important that we don't just gather the information. We've got to think about how we're also going to use it. If we measure 500 meters, then as well as thinking that it should take about maybe 10 minutes to get to that junction, we've got to also remember to stop if we're not there and say 15 minutes. I guarantee you, if we keep on walking, we'll eventually get to a junction, but just not the right one. So it is important to act on this information rather than just take it and just measure it. There's no denying that experience also helps us to design our journeys. The more time that we spend in a particular environment, the more that we get tuned into what the land will actually be like. I'm going to jump straight in here at the deep end and look at an example from an ordinary survey map in the mountain environment. And you can see it here. What do you think you will see if you're standing at this blue dot looking along the Glen towards points A and B? Anticipation is the key. When we're looking at a map and planning it, it really helps if we can actually visualize what that map is telling us. Here, we can use software like MemoryMap or AnqueteMap to help us with this. Google Earth is also a tool that I've used a lot when planning walks. However, that's not so good for the forest environment. So here we are. We're at the blue dot looking towards A and B. And you can see the Glen with the river in the bottom and the path along the left-hand side and how steeply the ground and either side of that river rises. So again, here's the map and it's two-dimensional form. And here it is with a little bit of help from 3D software. And here's how it looks on the ground in reality. Standing on the side of the slope looking along that Glen. And again, you can see points A and B. Although I've used the mountains here in the Cairngorms, the same principles apply to low-level walks. When we're looking at the map, you may see this. The track marks along a section of map. And here's how it looks in reality. And again, here's a single dashed line, a smaller path, and how it looks in reality. Bearing in mind that not all paths and tracks will look like these, there may be some places where you will very quickly realise they're not what perhaps you expected. It will be important that you ensure that your plans are still appropriate if they're not exactly as expected. These surprises do get less and less the more experience you have in different environments. Now for the description of the journey. Before we look at an example in this area of map in the Cairngorms, let's start a little more simple again. So here we are in the centre of London. How would you describe the route from Big Bend to Buckingham Palace? Would you use a technique of identifying tick off features or collecting features, as they're often known? But here, we tick off two streets on the right-hand side. Then we would follow over Handrail, the edge of the park, before stopping at the last dot there, at the next junction. So my tick off or collecting features would be junction on the right, Handrail the path, and stop at the last junction. And when I look up, I would be anticipating seeing Buckingham Palace. Looking back at the walk around Loch Morlach, if we're going clockwise around the Loch and the shore path, then there's probably no need to worry about tick off features. We would just keep the water on your right-hand side. However, if we follow this route, the red route that's came up, then here we have some points here and here. We'd want to ensure that we tick these off as we go along. Probably no need to tick off the last path junction because we know we're just hugging or hand railing the edge of the Loch along that last section. Now, to think about how contour lines can become tick off features on our journey, let's say we're walking from High Rise to Stickle Tarn down here, and then via Blearegg, sorry, down to the Tarn. How can we describe the journey? Well, the same principles apply. We're going to identify tick off features. In this environment, however, we can now use our knowledge of contour lines to add in tick off features that rely on the shape of the land, not just junctions and paths. Here we've left the summit and we're walking down the path, but at that blue dot that I've just highlighted, we see the contour lines are closer together, so we can tick off the gradient getting steeper. And again, at the bottom of that slope, a nice little tick off feature is where it flattens off again. And at that second one, we can use this reminder that we're then going to turn right and head down to the Tarn itself. Now, finally, let's bring it all together. For this route, we can use everything that we've spoken about. So, the distance, roughly, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, roughly 10 kilometers will give us an idea, depending on how fast we're planning walking, how long this walk shall take. As we leave the car park, we'll cross over the river and then we'll get to a tick off feature here that we can expect, a track junction. I probably don't have to get the map back out of my pocket at this point if it's a nice clear day and I've been expecting that. I can continue on my way, identifying again the next tick off feature or collecting feature as the ground steepens up. And we can anticipate to be walking steep uphill until we get to here where it flattens off, shown by the widening of the contour lines again. Over to the spot height. At this point, I may use the land around me, the fact that I am leaving the path to orientate the map, keeping the lock in and the quarry down on my left steeper ground on my right hand side and I can orientate the map to allow me to walk up towards Cairn Locking. When I get up there, I can then go into a hand railing idea where I'm following the edge of the cliffs along all the way to the summit of Cairngorm. From there, from in the mist, I may have to set the map at this time potentially by using the compass method to set the map to help me on my way back down towards the Tarmigan where I can see the ground gets a bit steeper again before ending up at the car park. How hard we have to work at navigation here would very much depend on how good or bad the visibility was. In really poor visibility, perhaps that very first tick off feature here might actually be quite tricky and we perhaps would need the distance and to work out how long that shorter leg would take us. In crystal clear visibility, perhaps the compass or maybe even the map doesn't need to be out of our pocket at all but just handy in case we need it. We can practice all of this even when it is clear. That way we can not just practice it but see who we get something wrong without the worry of being lost. Speaking of practice, there's lots of books out there but I'd have to give one probable special mention to the purple one here in the top left. It's an excellent book in very simple language with very clear simple pictures to learn from. It started off by asking what do we want to know about our walks and why really do we need to learn to navigate at all? Well, what do we want to know about our walks? These things here, these maps, whatever scale and type you choose to use, those things have the answers. All we really have to do is enjoy learning to read and understand them. There's other different ways of practicing as well as practicing your local hills that you may know well. That's the thing about practicing in a local hill. You probably don't usually take the map out of your pocket with it. If you do, though, you'll start to identify tick off features that perhaps you've not noticed in the past. There's also orientating events around the country and these are always friendly and offer a good way of getting practice. Lots of short navigational legs with different techniques that we've spoken about here tonight. They are good fun for all ages and fitness levels but believe me, there's absolutely no need to wear lycra or to run. Every event I have been to has always been exceptionally friendly with people more than happy to help out if you get a little bit stuck. And the final picture of this evening. This picture here, because I think it's wonderful and having spoken to a lot of people that struggle with their navigation that have been intimidated to learn and open a map for the first time, views like this often appear out of the reach of people like that. How good you are at map reading or how bad and how early you are in your career of learning it. Views like this are open to anyone. If you look really closely in this picture the road is just down here in the middle and from there to where this picture was taken it's only about an hour walk and it's on a good path with no navigational difficulties whatsoever. So please, I would encourage you to get out there, build experience build confidence and have lots of fun. It's a big skill to be able to do and gives you a tremendous amount of freedom. Suck up any questions and a big thank you for everyone tuning in this evening. Greatly appreciated. The last slide for myself is you maybe want to take a wee snapshot of that. There's lots of good resources online but that's just a couple of stuck up. And that is everything. So thank you very much guys. John and Mark over to yourselves. Which is well worth tuning in for. Could you hear me then? You were very quiet but I put an earphone just to hear you. Apologies for that. Sorry about that. I was just basically saying that if you missed anything this evening then we will be putting this recording on YouTube in about the next half an hour as well so you can catch up and watch it again. And then please do join us again next week at the same time 8 o'clock and it will be John's turn to do his session which is the next steps of navigation. And also check out Glenmore Lodge's brilliant courses and head up to Scotland and get involved in one of those. You won't regret it. Thank you very much everyone for this evening. Thank you. Bye bye. Hi guys, I'm still here. Are people still on? I'm just typing a few questions in here that I'm personally to folk. Great. I'm happy to answer a couple here as well. I'm looking through the 3D modelling options that we spoke about that was Anquiet and MemoryMap both use both are available on your computer and have a very simple little button you just press show me the 3D view and and that appears. That map is also another one that's available for your mobile phone both Android and iOS. Can you put up your list of resources again? I possibly can. Yes, Glen.