 Good evening, everyone, and thank you for joining us this evening. Welcome to tonight's talk with Alice Brigham and Glenmore Lodge, which is all about navigation next steps. Before we begin, I just want to apologize to any of you who tuned in last week and the confusion that we had over some of the times and some of the technical issues. Hopefully tonight, fingers crossed, we'll go a lot more smoothly. And thank you to all those who did get in touch after the talk to say that how much they enjoyed the session, it's always appreciated. Tonight's talk is the follow up to last week's session, which was new to maps, which you can actually watch still on Facebook and YouTube. And we're delighted to be joined by the guys at Glenmore Lodge. And thank you guys for giving up your time this evening. And the springman Glenmore Lodge have been working together for the last six years equipping people for the outdoors. So it's, it's great to be able to put on this talk this evening. Good morning, doesn't know Glenmore Lodge is Scotland's national training center, and they offer hundreds of outdoor courses so please do check them out if you've not not come across them before. Tonight we're joined by head of mountaineering. Hello, I'm Glenmore Lodge, John Jones. This is a live and interactive talk. And so we'll be taking your questions throughout the evening. If you're watching on Facebook, then please do add in your comments below the video and we will be monitoring those. If you're watching on zoom, then please use the Q&A to ask any questions. And John has two assistants behind the scenes, Giles and Bill who'll be looking after the questions. And we'll also be taking questions at the end as well so please please do send me your questions. So, I'll hand over to John, then really. Hello John, can you hear me. Yeah, great. Thanks Mark. Thanks for that intro. Hey, good evening everybody. Thank you very much for giving up your time to come along this evening and get a bit of input on some mountain navigation. I'll emphasize what Mark was saying. I'm here doing the easy bit really which is just sort of chatting through delivering you know what I do so it's quite easy for me to chat through this. Great. If you can challenge Giles and Bill with any questions that you may have that you want to build, you know, that you ask that you want me to build on, you know, maybe at the end of the talk or if you want the guys to come in with something with a different angle. You know, don't hesitate to ask a question and no question is a silly question and don't worry if it's a question about last week's talk. That's not a problem. Or if there's any questions about after this talk, you know, what you do beyond this. It's not it's not a problem. This week's talk is probably a little bit longer than last week's just purely because there's a little bit more going on. When it comes to navigation and you know the, the next steps, then we tend to use technology a little bit more and I'll chat about that. There's more discussion around taking a bearing use of a compass. I'm going to talk in a bit more detail about that. I'm going to chat a little bit about, you know, poor weather navigation and if we get lost, you know, if it goes wrong and that can happen for different reasons for people. So, you know, so we'll deal with that at the end because, you know, let's let's let's do with all the positives first. And then we can, we can then look to see what's gone wrong. Bill you popped your hand up is something there that you want to say before I carry on. No, he's taken his hand away. No, no, no, he's coming. You bombing my talk bill. Great. So what I've left and just so you can see my point here just to remind of last week is we've got our five days and we're going to build on that just to remind direction just to make sure we're, you know, we're planning on we were heading the right way. We're designing it. Yeah, so we're with we're thinking about how we've we've planned our day our route. We worked out our distances, how long it's going to take. And then also then the description we're going to try and visualize what what what our day or what our leg might be about. And pretty much this talk is built around this kind of these five days. Just to remind you all, you know, I can't see any of you. You can all see me. Please use it. We've got here the chat box. I see it's the Q&A box please use the Q&A box and Giles and Bill will will do the rest. And you already know that those guys are there in the background. So here we go. You might remember last week Bill mentioned about, you know, before we go on any any route we're planning our day or half day or hours walk. Because to prevent some of these things that we've mentioned about, you know, navigating in poor weather or if we get lost, if we have really good planning or if we spend time with our planning, then hopefully that will make any, any kind of mishap occurring on our journey, whether that is just an hour's walk with, you know, kids out the car and the buggy and all that kind of thing or whether it's a day out with with friends or with people maybe you you've only met recently so you're still sort of getting to know each of this new group of friends. When it comes to the planning, he thinks you consider it's the symbol here is for like the weather and the conditions. So, you know, using the appropriate mountain weather forecast weather apps, etc. I'm going to look at them in a moment. So that you're aware what's going to what's what's what's going on out there. So also that you're properly equipped, you know you've got the right equipment for you that you know you've got waterproofs or hot gloves if it's low temperatures, etc. So that sort of the symbol for people is, you know, make sure with your planning, you know, you know who you're going out with. You are everybody's like minded you've got the same aspirations is really important for the day out. You know, you don't want to spring on someone that actually it's you know, it's a 10 hour day and you're going to be going 25 kilometers and doing 2000 meters in height. So it's a good day that could be a big shocker for someone would be for me. You know that everybody's buying into the same the same deal. So whether that is a family walk around the lock and, and it's appropriate for granny right down to the wee ones on the scooter bikes. Or whether you know it's a group of friends, you know you plan the day online. This is the first time you're getting out, but you've you've you're you're aspiring to the same kind of day. What is this the image here is the mountain is the train that you tend to visit. Make sure that in your planning, you know, your research the train you're aware of what you're letting yourselves in for you know whether it's a path walk or are you going off the path, or there's you know what altitude it's out, you know, again, and that will bring you back to where the conditions, etc. So these these three symbols are just a really good template to stick to when it comes to any of your when it when any of your planning the day out. So tools with that. Then, you know, like last week, you know, decide on the kind of map, you know, mapping beforehand. There could be some guidebooks about the area online loads of information about different walks online. You can just use a lot a lot of them. I use a lot of them with my own family. I went to use a lot online to the walks and it gives you, you know, you can get images people's description, etc. They might even have shown it on there. They might even mapped it on a GPS so you can see the route on the map, etc. So you're doing distance with your with your compasses if you want to work out a bit more detail the size of your journey. And the other thing is technology. Let's not ignore that it's technology is out there. And it's completely out there for us to use and be silly for us to shy away from it. The key thing is, what's really important is making sure that we're not completely relying just on technology. I'm definitely using technology as a tool in my planning and when I'm on my journey, but I'm not completely relying on it. Okay, and I'll tell them a bit more detail as we go along with that. Some things I've highlighted here on this slide is what I call my planning tools. And this is all from on my phone because all my iPad you know when I'm planning at home. So here is excellent for giving you like a visual of what the ground is like, and you can click on different keys to tell you maybe what an angle of slope is or highlight footpaths, etc. You can use a very good app. You can have different scales in here one to 25, one to 50 hobbies, etc. to help, you know, you can even plot the track if you wanted to. Or if you haven't got mapping for that air for the area you're going to, you can always use your phone before you know you've had chance to grab an actual paper map to take on on the hill with you. I will use my weather apps so I can look at the weather forecast so here we've got the Glenmore forecast because that's where we're starting from for our journey. And also, you know, depending on where I'm walking. If I'm down south, I'm going to look on the BMC website for here over the border, then it's mountainous Scotland, because we do need to consider access. And something we've got to consider in Scotland is, you know, certain times a year there's always some kind of hunting going on, you know, and there'll be people either, you know, fishing so we've got to be careful, you know, when we're when we're doing, we've got to be careful, very careful when it comes to the grouse season up here, but also when it's deer stalking that's something we've got to have a great awareness of. So, you know, these are four pretty, pretty key apps that I've got on my phone. So, yeah, you know, we scale am I going to work with, you know, living from being off from north Wales originally I know that I to one to 25 to OS one to 25,000 maps would cover cover the whole of Snowdonia. And what on one single one to 50. Living in Scotland though, completely different. And the scale is so massive that a lot of the time I'm actually working on a one to 50 because OS won't have produced enough one to 25s or you know that are appropriate for the areas I want to go walking to, or I'm just working on such a massive scale that it's actually the appropriate map to work with. But also there's hobbies and something to be to know about OS OS are fantastic maps. Great scale. Very common, you know, something we would be familiar with, but they're not the one to 50 isn't really designed for walkers where we're a little bit further down their kind of priority list, and it's more for kind of emergency services, military, etc. So they don't get updated quite as regularly as maybe the Explorer map the one to 25 will get updated a bit more. But what is a very reliable walk or climbers map is the Harvey's because it is Harvey's are there for us as sort of outdoor enthusiasts and so they will update that a lot more regularly and they'll do a lot of surveys on the ground, they'll talk to the local community to ask about local pass or dwellings and ruins and things like that. So I'm local history because I have a lot of information on the back so what you tend to find is there's a lot of us who've got very comfortable with with using a Harvey's because of that extra detail. And the other beauty of the Harvey's is I quite personally I quite like the shading it really helps the features to stand out for me. The different colors can really help. Whereas on the OS this is the one to 25 for me is quite busy, and I tend to lose some of the detail. And, and then this is your standard kind of OS 150, where, you know, yeah, it's pretty basic on the detail. There's enough there. But yes, pretty basic. So yeah, there's some just personal preferences really I suppose around kind of kind of map scales. Yeah, so that's all to do with my planning. And like I said, I'm using my phone without my iPad in the evening beforehand and choosing the type of math I'm going to use. I've researched, maybe on websites of information or I've gone to certain books to find out more information about my work. This talk basically is this sorry this sort of next set of slides is is pretty much about this doing this walk in a what's that an anti clockwise I've direction if I hover my little pointer over. So this is Glenmore Lodge, where myself, Giles and Birle are very lucky to work at this is a fantastic local walk that that a lot of folks will do locally a lot of families, etc. And this is really lovely Corbett. Hill of the Shepherd is a 360 view of the whole area. So, you know, this is an old rovers route so in sort of go back to sort of clan times they would move their cattle through here. Hence, this is the Hill of the Shepherd so they could source more want to see where the cattle going but also to see if there was anybody trying to steal the cattle. That was probably the key reason. Yeah, my walk basically is going to take me out of Glenmore Lodge, along this lovely wee valley here where I'm going to chat about collecting features. So I've owned both the, which is a catching feature which I'll describe, then at this mountain path, which is Stephen places to the summit. So this walk and this is where it's really important when it comes to my planning of, have I got the skills, the ability to undertake this walk, because in bad weather and low cloud, then for me to come down this part of the hill, then I need to be able to take a bearing to get safely to come off the right part of the hill. If I'm, you know, if the conditions are pretty bad or I'm not comfortable taking a bearing off here, I can just stay on the path and come and travels the mountain and drop down, actually down this way here and come off the hill there. So I have got a backup plan, if I don't want to wander down here that could almost be my escape plan. But to do this walk obviously we need to have a level of fitness, a level of confidence, a level of knowledge of navigation, an idea of time. And importantly, the key thing is to be able to take a bearing off the off the hill here. And I'm going to look at that. I almost look at taking a bearing in isolation in a moment. This is a reminder from from last week I know Bill spent quite a bit of time on this I'm just going to briefly touch on it but setting the map. Super important. Can I do my planning at home, you know my iPad or paper maps. This is this is when I'm on the hill this is this is probably the most crucial bit when you're trying to leave the car park in the right direction. Yeah, or you know, or you've got off the bus and yet the bus stop and to save you walking down the road for half a mile realize you're walking the wrong way and have to turn back. But setting the map is the key thing that I'm doing. As soon as I start my journey some so before I leave the car park, but whenever I'm pausing at any point, set the map is King. And I'm what I'm doing and I'm either using the side on the two maps here actually you can see how hobbies sound pretty clearly compared to the to the OS here but definitely highlight my personal preference here. And remember we can set the map in two ways we can use the features around us and line anything up, or I can use my or if I'm in, you know, in the forest or I'm in, or if I'm on the hill and then clag and I can't see features. Then, if I remind you from last week that's when I use my compass, because the top of the map is always north and the writing goes north south down the map. And remember the ready to my compass always points north. So that's why I used to help myself set the map. At this point, I think it's really important to remind I'm going to bring all them up because I hate it when they there we go. It's important just to get a wee bit of familiarity with the compass because we're going to look at that next in isolation. But a couple of key things here the base plate the big flat bit at the bottom compass needle is that red floaty arrow that whittles around the compass housing is a twiddly twiddly round bit. I think arrows are those fixed red and black lines within the compass housing. This bit's really important the compass, the direction of travel arrow, and then all of these bits down the side here are different ways of measuring. And this is a silver type for compass which if anybody comes on of course we recommend we pretty much recommend the silver type for. It's pretty much want, you know, a very good compass you can use out there it's got all the all the attributes that you need for navigation. So it's got a 125, 150 and one a lot of them built 40 now. Personally, I like to use the mills down the side. Yeah, and I'll chat about that in a moment. So, you know, taking a day and actually this is a quick shot from the summit of that hill me the book or looking out to the cam gorms absolute location. So when it comes to taking a bearing. Then it's just having that. First of all, that that it's good to practice it when you don't need to take a bearing so you can practice in a nice safe environment where, you know, if it doesn't go quite right, it's not going to, it's not going to go horribly wrong. So you can sort of, you know, practice putting your map on the compass in in the compass housing, you know, if it's on a laminated map then your compass will slip. So having a paper map inside an ordinary map case is really helpful because the compass will stick to an ordinary map case, whereas if you is like anything if you, you know, if you cut corners and you know, I think value for money. If you buy a cheap map case, then your compass will just slide off it and it'll be really awkward to use in the rain. Whereas if you pay a little bit more for a quality waterproof map case, then then the compass will stick to it and that's far easier when it's wet or when you've got gloves on, etc. You might want to crouch down and put your map on your knee. If it's windy. This is something you want to do in quite, you know, so you feel comfortable in taking a bearing. You don't want to take your bearing when you're feeling a bit of distress, because that's when mistakes can happen. So, there's no way if you haven't taken a bearing before or like all I can do here is direct you in the best direction. Okay. Because, and I've got YouTube links at the end set to help with this. But basically what I'm doing is, so this is a summit of Milibuco here which is my going to be my, my key point of the day. And I, and I want to, and I want to head off down this ridge. Now, what we always do is always take a guesstimate. So, you know, top of the map or North is zero or 360. Yeah, and then East is 90 South is 180 West is 270 and then we're back to North again. So here on this map here this is so North is up here the top of the map. I'm walking on almost a southerly direction. Yeah. So I'm gonna be thinking my head right okay it's gonna be round about the 180s, and I'm expecting it to be either side of that. If I take my bearing and I've got something like 360 I know that I've made an error, and my error is probably either I've turned my compass housing the wrong way round, or I'm sorry my base plate the wrong way round, or I've turned this this compass housing incorrectly. So the key thing is I line up my base plate in the direction I want to go which is down this ridge. I turn my compass housing so that the north to south grid lines on this orienteering lines line up with the north to south grid lines on my Harvey's map now that is the only downside so Harvey's map is the grid lines on the Harvey's map are brown and they're quite hard to see, whereas on the OS maps they're blue so a lot easier to see so pros and cons. And then to make sure I walk in the correct direction I then turn the compass of the red arrow, red floaty arrow sits in the red fixed arrow. Now I don't follow the red arrow, because it means I'm always going to walk north. Okay, I've got to follow my base plate, and I've got a little bit of video here to help show that. So what Emma's doing here is she's taking a bearing. She's holding the compass and she's turning her body until the two red arrows. Yeah, here's another image of that. So different type of compass actually this is my own one I can't remember what this one's called but what I like about this one is the arrow settles really quickly. And it's got a, I have to wear plus ones now for reading so it's got a really big magnifier so I can see the map. And on the end here I can measure in mills. But as you can see here, my bearing is down this path. This is actually from on this point up on the hillside. You can see I've got my red floaty arrow where you can't quite see it over my red fixed arrow. And I'm lining it down the path and this is where, because it does pass a bit of regular, it sort of disappears. And you can see here I'm doing the same thing here I'm looking down this ground. And if you notice I'm holding the compass slightly away from me. I don't know I don't want to make sure I want to make sure I've got nothing magnetic around my wrist. And I want to make sure I don't hold my compass too close to my body so that my mobile phone affects it. The other key thing, don't put your compass next to your mobile phone in your backpack because the magnetic screen will impact your compass. Okay that's really important. Two ways I can walk on a bearing. I can either walk on the bearing holding it in front of me, watching it the whole time to make sure I stay on track. Be careful with this because you can trip over so you need to be looking up to see where you're going and following the bearing. Just a bit of video. Oh, come back. Is it going to play for me? Oh, drop. Let's see if this next one plays. Or the other way of walking on a bearing is to line the bearing up to an obvious feature and then walk to that feature and then take your bearing and then line your bearing up again. Like this. Pretty rough day actually. So I'm sorry that first bit of video didn't play, I don't know about that. But you get the idea with that one is I'm lining the bearing up and then walking to a feature that I saw and then I'd be lining my bearing up again. And the reason we practice taking bearings in good weather so that we can do it in bad weather like what we saw there. Yeah. Great. Okay, so going back to our kind of five D's, you know, and taking that time out to look at taking a bearing. We've got our direction as in from setting our map, we then sort of designing our route, where do we want to go. And that's where, you know, my fat mapping my planning can really help because I what I what I call like a handrail is in navigation terms a handrail is a really good line feature it could be a good footpath. In this route, the footpath is this route along here. And handrail can also be a good line feature. So the ridge that I'm going to take my bearing down. Yeah. And, you know, handrail might be something like this you can see this, you know, this pattern absolute motorway. So, you know, a lot of the time in Scotland we do have good pass like this but a lot of time we are off the path because you've got so so so many areas that people can visit we don't tend to have the same intensity of areas that you can have down in the district or the lakes or North Wales, where you know a large population is focused on a very small area what we tend to have is a small population focused on a really massive area. So we haven't got many areas like this where we've got a really useful path. So for example, the handrails. So I say the pass and streams that make good handrails. Another one that we might use out on the mountain when we're not on a path because, you know, what we want to do is we want to build ourselves up so we can build confidence in not having to walk on pass all the time, because if we if we're not confident to in our navigation, we walk on pass all the time that's we're always we're never going to reach our, our ceiling. So we're never going to expand our horizons. So having the confidence to step off the path and going to rough open land is a is a good place to go to be once you've got the confidence experience of doing lots of past in the right way, not getting lost, being on top of things, then it's good to step off the path. And what we're like, what we're relying on then is using console features and the shape of the ground. And so a really good handrail, an obvious example is you're walking along a valley, and you've got steep sides, steep, steep sides, you decide, well, that's, that's you, that's you following a handrail, and that might be off the path. Yeah. Or you might just or you might be following a high plateau, where, you know, the the ground drops off either side that there's no path. So, so the handrails can be console features as well. They don't just not just for passing things. So, going back to my kind of my, my route, which is from Glenmore Lodge walking in anti clockwise over me in the book or back down to Glenmore Lodge. Then as I'm walking along what I'm doing to keep my journey flowing is I'm not going to stop every single junction and try and get my map out and work out what I'm doing. I'm going to have a bit of map memory of a, of a, you know, if I'm going from Glenmore Lodge, say to my own body, I'm going to be thinking, okay, I'm going to cross, you know, two junctions, I'm going to cross a burn walk by relocking. And then I'm going to get to my own body before I start my scent of me the book or on a navigation trip to recall these tick off features or collecting features. Yeah, so here's a track junction. So there on the map. Here's another one. This is another collecting feature where the path crosses the burn that comes into the path. And there's a burn there. Here's another collecting feature, which is the wheel lock in here on the way past. Yeah, we call it locally it's called the fairy lock in. Because you tell the kids at the fairies wash their clothes in there. That's why the water is green. And then so you've got three, three really good positive collecting features there. So there's like a track junction. There's a burn crossing the end of the track. There's a relocking. And then my catching feature is something really, really solid to me isn't going to disappear. And I'm not expecting this body to disappear in any time soon. Another really good catching feature you might you might this is actually a very strong junction here that could be a catching feature. A big, a big lake or lock. So it is a good catching feature. And I got some more examples here. A call this catching feature this change in terrain. If you're controlling the hillside here in the spirit be a catching feature. So something where it's going to be impossible for you to miss it. Yeah. Great. So, as well on my journey, I want to again I want to go back to sort of working out so for me to, you know, work on my legs I've got my catching features my collecting, my tick off and collecting features. I've got something that's going to catch me. So I don't overrun, but also I want to have an idea of time. And that's not just a guess that is you know, I'm going to work out by measuring, you know. And like I said, I like to use mills because on any scale so one millimeter on a Harvey's one of 40 one mills 40 meters. So it means 10 mil a centimeter is 400 meters. What's, what's easy. Okay, my head. On a one to 50 one mill is going to be 50 meters so centimeters half kilometer, so on and so forth. I've worked out my distance you know I can work out okay that's you know two kilometers or three kilometers. Then it means that I can work out well, the duration how long is that going to take me actually how much effort is that is it 20 minutes or two hours. And that's something that I find when I'm working is for committee struggle to work you know, that whole concept of time, and it is losing track of time that can really get us into trouble and can get us lost. So keeping track of time is really important to make, and that's only going to happen if we can accurately measure distance and work out how long time things are going to take us. So my apologies for the busy slide here, but my, my best top tip I've got is this chart here is called the naysmiths rule timing chart. Please Google that put in like Google pics, loads of this is where this came, you know, loads of examples have come up print one off cut it out. And if you've got that option or put it in a you know, protected from the weather. And this is a great way for working out how long you think a journey is going to take you. And what you can do is you can work out individual legs, but also you can work out the time for the whole journey. So you know that if you're getting a bus or a train, you know how long it's going to take you to then get back to get the next bus or the train. Yeah. The other thing to make sure is make sure you add on time for the for a cent as well. We don't tend to add on any extra time for dissent for going downhill, but for going uphill. We tend to have time on and what I tend to do is I say to folks if the contour lines are really tight together really tightly squeezed together. Then I add on a minute for every contour line that I'm going up. If the contour lines are really straight apart quite stretched, then I'll maybe only add 30 seconds for for a for a contour line. And sorry when I mean contour line as well I mean like on the on the OS where it's 10 meters. Harvey's maps, so pros and cons downside to Harvey's maps is their contour lines are every 15 meters. Okay. So there's some different methods to work out. And I think at the bottom you have got an example. So here we go, you know, for four kilometers, we're 200 meters easy angled height game is an hour and 10 minutes. So, you know, I'm okay now is actually quite quick. So I would say if you walk in with a group of friends you're probably going to walk about three kilometers an hour. You're going to walk at 4k if it's maybe you and a friend and you quite fit, and you'll probably walk on 5k on your own. If you've you know you're out for a blast. So, and you probably walk at 2k an hour, if if you with, you know, a gang of family, you know, and every chair and you stop to look at snails and leaves and stuff like that. Great. Now then I'll drop this one and this is this kind of this this definitely is starting to just keep up to something else. This almost maybe headed headed off a question that might come in. Some people are when it when we start talking about, you know, working out working out distance, how long is it going to take working out, you know, look at our watch how long you know you might even use an altimeter. You know, to sort of want to see a height gain. Pacing is another useful tool, but I'm only going to use pacing if I'm in if I'm in poor weather, and it's a short navigational leg. So, this there's two types of my for me there's two kinds of navigation isn't there's there's macro big picture and there's micro, which is doing a very short, short, short leg. Big picture is, you know, to be walking along the forest track to like the example I've been using to this tick off features to a really big collecting feature. But if I'm going to paste it's probably because I'm off the path, and I'm maybe walking on a bearing, and I'm going to, you know, 500 meters to a to a definite feature which is maybe a changing contour or locking us and think. And that's where beforehand, this isn't something I'm just going to discover my pacing there and then this is something I'm going to practice in good weather. So when I'm outside in bad weather, I've got an idea of what my pacing is. And I've got an example here that you know and I, you know, walk of average height of a flat ground is 60 double paces for 100 years. It's going to vary for everybody. Yeah, it's going to be different if you're tired to be different if you've got a heavy rucksack on if you're walking uphill or downhill. So these are all things for you to go out and experiment to find out how many double paces you over 100 meters for steep terrain downhill along the flat. And this is where talk that technology is really good. You got to view range your app on your phone. Just put start track pace and start pace start counting. Wait till the wait till your your your phone hits 100 meters and then see how many paces that was. So that's one way it was one way of doing it. We've got a huge big take measure. We measure out a work we've got two posts and we paste between that. I'm six foot tall and I'm 56 double paces on the flat. But hey, but it's different for everybody. If I'm going up something really steep that might go up to 90 paces. Yeah, I want to say any questions but no one can speak. And the fight and so you did. So one of the final ones are going to look out here before I look at what starts to go wrong is is the description. So, you know, I've got my journey. I've planned out my route. I'm going anti clockwise. I'm going on the track. I've got kind of collecting features. I've got some good cats and features. I know, you know, that I'm going to have to take a bearing off off the summit here because there's no path. If it's good viz I might just need a very rough bearing just in fact general direction. If it's poor viz like that bit of video then I'm going to take a pop of bands get myself off the hill here. So what I'm going to do with the description is what am I going to be expecting? You know, what do I expect it to look like? How do I expect the train to be? So if I'm stood here rival and bothy, what do I expect to see? Well at Viva and I'm expecting to the body to be there and it's quite flat. And but I'm expecting to see a hillside growing up in front of me, you know, I'm expecting steep ground. And if I was at this point here, what am I going to expect? I'm probably on the steepest part of the path there. I'm expecting a steep rugged mountain path. Yeah. So there we go. That's me at my rowing. I'm on the flat. Oh, the body just just showing there. You can see the hill going up in front of me. And here I am Polly at the hill and I can see it's pretty steep steep rugged path. Yeah. So trying to kind of visualize what it's going to be like is really useful and that's where, you know, a lot of the websites. The Highland Hill Walks is one that we use because you'll have people's photos in and that really helps you visualize what it is, where it is that you can be going. Great. Hey, so look, that's me, you know, I've done my mountain journey. Whenever whenever I'm doing my my walk, then at the end of the day, I'm always going to I'm always going to review it. Rather than review it, I don't want to sound too formal. I'm going to reflect on sort of my experience, the experience of my friends or family, whoever I was with or my my students, you know, my people I'm working with. And then I'll make adjustments for next time, you know, and they might be adjustments to make it even more positive. Or there might be adjustments because maybe something didn't go quite right and I want to, I want to prevent what this next slide is about of being out too long in poor weather or, or being out at night, or getting lost. So being able to review, you know, sleep on or sleep on it, I have to think about what you've done. You know, why was that long life thought, why did we get tired, you know, damn it, you know, for that food or whatever it might be. It's really good to do that rather than just doing the same thing and making the same mistakes, and then actually falling out of love with with with something that you know reason you really enjoy. Up here, you know, it says poor weather, you know, I think something we need to we all need to accept is if we all sat at home and waited for the good weather to get out and enjoy a day out. Then we're doing a disservice to ourselves, we're going to miss out on what can be, what can be a good experience is amazing how many times I've gone out expecting poor weather and I've actually had a really good weather day. And there's other times I've gone out in good weather, and it's ended up being a poor weather day. So it's all part of the parcel and, you know, first to expand our horizons and develop ourselves and be and feel confident in the outdoors. There's going to be times when we're going to, we're going to dip our toe in that kind of poor weather is making sure that we're doing that. Which is for you at the right time, when you feel that you've got the right skill level. And when you with, and if you out with other people that they're also at the right skill level and buying into this. But, you know, that kind of the more you dip your toe in it, the more experience you'll get and the more confident you'll get that, you know, if you know that then going out and poor weather that you'll be able to deal with any kind of situation. But what you don't want to do is you don't want to just pile out there when it's really atrocious conditions. You know, lightly dressed, not too sure about your navigation skills. That's, that's, that's you not being very responsible. So, you know, everybody's responsible for their own, you know, their own selves and what they do. We can't ignore it. British weather is really fickle. It changes all the time. So we need to start dipping our toe into it. And you might even find you might even quite enjoy the challenge. So poor weather night navigation. The reason I've got another navigation in there is this is the classic where it's amazing how many, it doesn't take much for your day to be delayed and you end up walking in tonight. It's always, always give advice. If when you get to that autumn or winter, early winter time of year, if the earlier you start, then you're always going to walk into the daylight. Whereas if you start late, you're always, what's going to happen is you're going to walk into the dark. And once it's dark, it's dark. It isn't going to get light again, not for about probably about 12 hours. So starting the, starting the dark walking to the light. Yeah. God, I sound like I'm preaching now. What to the light. So key thing is don't panic. Okay. So when you're out in bad weather, don't panic. It's about doing the basics well, but also being comfortable with the technology. Now there's a lot of downsize technology. They technology will not work in the rain. You get your smartphone out in the rain. And since you get a raindrop on the screen, it will just, you know, highlight everything. So make sure that you've got your smartphone in a proper waterproof map case. Make sure that you got a stylist so you can use it. Make sure you've had it on things like flight mode so your battery's been saved. Make sure, you know, these fights enough that you can see it and only use, you know, use it just to locate yourself. Okay. So let's say you've, you know, you've had it out there. You're not too sure you just want to check before you take your bang off the hill. Then the technology is really good just for that kind of check and challenge. Don't now resort to your technology. It's there just to sort of go, this is where you are crack on. Make sure it's a well designed leg. Yeah. So make sure you're going to really good catching feature or you're going to, you're going to use a really good line feature to get your cheek catching features of good handrails path or a burn or spur, etc. And trust your bearing. Take your guest and trust your bearing. Okay. Follow your bearing. Three and a few, a couple of things that in there and a point them out is having a solid attack point. What aiming off is and like I was saying, good catching, good catching feature. So attack point is very similar to a catching feature. Actually, it's something where you're going right. I definitely know. I definitely went up when I get to here. I'm definitely going to know where that is. And I'm going to take my next bearing from this really strong attack point. I've shown everyone here because we're familiar with that. Another example here is this is a ring contour on top of a ridge. It could be a summit attack point could be where to two footpaths really strong footpaths across each other, etc. Aiming off if I'm walking on my bearing and I need to get I need to get to a point, then I'm not going to take my bearing directly to it because that is always drift on a bearing always always doesn't matter how good a navigator you are, you'll always be slight drift. That's what we always tend to aim to quite big features or quite a good catching feature. What I won't do is take my bearing directly to maybe a spot height in the middle of a plateau. So something that could be easily missed. What I'm going to do is I'm going to purposely aim off to one side knowing that when I hit my plateau, I know I turn right and I'm going to get to my to my ring, my my ring contour, my trick point or my we both see or whatever it is. So I'm purposely aiming off. Okay, that's a really good technique to have and strong catching features. This is a great one. This look what a great obviously junction I've come down this mountain path bang major footpath when I hear that in our turn right. Yeah, so really good strong catching features or or if it's dark at night, you know something where it's a good water feature so you're going to get your feet wet, you know, that that that'll tell you that you've got there. Great. Where's case scenario. If you get lost. Yeah, now hands up. Yeah, you know, all of his my colleagues included some point we've been lost. For me, it was a day where actually had been original plan that day we've had other plans. So it was further down our kind of list of what we were going to do that day so it wasn't as well planned. It wasn't as well thought out. But last minute we'd let we decide to leave some stuff in the car, etc. Then we realized we needed on the hill because it was a bigger ambition then than what we realized. And on the same from the hill the weather was so bad and we were so and we're quite chilly because we're lightly dressed. We dropped out we dropped down the wrong side of the mountain. And it wasn't till we're halfway down the mountain where we came out of the cloud, and we're expecting to see the road that we saw a big sea lock. And we realized we'd gone completely 100 degree 180 degrees long. Yeah. So there was a few there was some, you know, there's a few more failure that day, especially with my wife. So the key thing is we get lost. Don't panic. Okay, can the technology help. Okay, what you tend to find is if people get lost is is probably because the technologies run out, and it might have been that they were lying on that little bit. Okay, but hopefully if you kept your phone warm, you've had it on flight mode, and you've just used it to go. I'm just going to do a self check here and my where I think I am. Yeah, great. I am where I am. I pool the knowledge so you know where we will ask you know what did the ground do did it go up to the go down. You know you're working back from the previous known point you know how long was it you know we did we track a time I know it was only 20 minutes well we can't be that lost it's only been walking 20 minutes. What's the ground doing around me is it going up is it going down like what's caused me to stop. And then I might just work out well what's the ground which way is the ground facing and we call that taking an aspect of slope. And once I've worked that out. Then it's important to move. There's no point in staying still because there's only you're only going to get so much information. If you take an aspect of slope and you know that the slope in front of you is style. Then okay if I'm on a self slope well what's in front of me is it going to get less steep or steeper am I going to get a water features it can be a ridge. So you need to build the information. So slope aspect yeah you know if I'm stood up here well which way is the ground facing. Is it gradual is a week you know re-entry features here does it is it gradual then to steeper ground. And hopefully I'll gain enough information that I can work out where I am. To finish on a positive. It's not always poor visibility. And we're going to leave you with quite a few useful links and what I've probably asked you to do here because I'm going to come off this in a second so you can start seeing folk who are presenting. But if you can take a photo of that. There's some useful references there we go walk islands that was the website I meant when it comes to the sort of good images of hill walks. But what I've also got on here is, you know, taking a bag nice bit of YouTube, how to take aspect of slope. And also just, you know, doing your entire leg for a navigation leg. So I really encourage you after this talk to click onto the website just help build on on what I was chatting about that. Great. That is me. I don't know if the guys have been answering many questions or I see the chat box has been busy. So we'll see what Bill has to say. Hey John that was great. Thank you very much. Yeah, there's quite a few questions come in so hopefully that's, hopefully we've managed to answer most of them please feel free to keep adding while we're talking. I have a couple here John for you. And the first one is, could you explain the difference and the significance and if we need to know the difference between magnetic north and true north. Oh good question. Yeah, they don't. Well, I say they don't. So grid more when the variation is so best, I'm trying to do to keep the simple as I can, the variation is so slight now that we just don't worry about it. Yeah, because also when when I take a bearing, as soon as I look up, my needles going to move anyway so we're basically we're always navigating in what we call a corridor of error. And but it seems to work. Yeah. And what we do is we always make sure that we're working to a, if it's a long distance to a big features going to catch us, or we're going to walk, or we're going to navigate a very short distance so the area is very very limited. But when I started, I've been working the outdoors for 30 years. A little bit over now. And when I first started in the outdoors, I think I had to add on something like 12 degrees or something like that. But now it's so close is only a degree or two in it that it's something I don't, I don't have to worry about. I'm not teaching that at the moment. You're showing your age, John. I'm an old man. I've got a couple more but Giles, would you like to come in? Do you have a couple? He's hiding. You're having a bad hair day. Oh, I think I'm just looking at the questions that are coming in the question and answers. I did. I had a problem with the something was not quite working and I had to type answers instead. So there's a question here about going up to living in East Anglia and walking challenges here and not the same up north. Where does one go to get information about where and when it's possible to walk in Scotland? Well, I'll answer the last bit first is it's possible to walk anytime and anywhere in Scotland. So that's the first answer. But information about it is this new resources. And apart from bringing us up at level watch, which is one way is there's a really good one really good website. I don't mind putting this out there is that it's called walk items. And it's a full of really, really useful information about all kinds of walks, including route maps and things like that. So I point you towards that really it's a fantastic resource and we all use it. Right. And John, one for you. Any recommendations for head torches? That's surely like Giles, isn't it? Oh, well. Well, I'll be doing the same as everybody else out there now be Googling it. So if I recommend someone then like petrol head torches, that's what we'll use at work. Like they're brilliant. They're so reliable or rechargeable. You can bluetooth into your phone and get the app so you can see what the lifespan is on them. You can adjust it to the beam. Yeah, you know, but when it comes to individual models. You know, like I said, I've already said I'm also I can't remember what they're called but but does might be able to help me over that but perhaps head torches. But definitely why I don't recommend because we had a fire at Glenmore Lodge two years ago, because for someone who was on a hill walking course, and they plugged in their head torch to charge and left it on the bed. And it was like they they'd got they'd got it on eBay and it was imported from China. And while it was charging it heated up, and it melted the battery and it set the duvet on fire, which then set the room on fire. We then caused a whole world of strife for us. But thank goodness for fire doors, etc. There's loads of loads of smoke damage. So yeah, do not do not buy from overseas. Definitely buy go for some like petrol someone's people who really well recognize. I've got a couple more here and I'll ask both questions because I think they're both linked to the same answer really. So David was asking what is the best way of assuring your group that although I have gone away, perhaps a little bit lost, everything will be okay. And in general, knowing some maybe cool but putting some about a pressure on you when you're when you're with a group that are seeing you delete it. Just buy them. I'm going to send to that for me, David, it's being honest, because we're all human and we all do make a wee bit of mistake. But I think having if you've not involved people and the people you're with in the planning process and all of a sudden you say you're lost. The world is in your shoulders, but being really honest and right back at the beginning of the day you involve in people with your planning process, rather than say this is where we're going. That's any guys, this is what we should see along the way. And people will then ask you things and a discussion will happen and causing you probably to pick up those wee errors before they become an issue and get you lost. So for me planning and involving people in the planning and involving people a journey and putting your ego to the side nicely said you know what folks this is, this is taking longer than we thought. So what we use about as a group, we decide to change plans so we're not in this unknown terrain in the dark. And on the planning as well, sorry someone else asked them what was the 3d software you used on the presentation and, again, that's a brilliant tool for planning so both memory map and banquet are two mapping softwares that are available on your PC or Apple and on the computer and they've both got just one button that says view 3d fans in this you have to use one button you press and it shows you that 3d. In terms of for your phone and when it comes to mind this fact map, which I think also gives you some 3d elements slightly different from what you had there. Again, definitely part of the planning process rather than on the whole process. Well, so the GPS question is next from Peter wood. So Peter would ask, should I be keeping my GPS warm inside a jacket or pack or are they typically more reliable in colder temperatures and phones. I like to have mine kept my packs to track my path and this and still familiarizing that last comments really good I saw I'd say the first thing we want to be doing is trying to GPS out it doesn't really matter so much. How long the battery lasts to get the battery fully charged have it outside and on and fight and work out ways of how you like to use it there so I've done a lot of GPS use. And I, one thing I do with mine is I rechargeable batteries I was fully recharge them before I go out and I have spare batteries as well which I take with me. So I detune my GPS so that I don't have a bright screen during daytime, but at night time I have the light on and I'm using it at night so I do various things that manage the battery and a lot of GPS has had that. So I'd say get to know your GPS, get to know it in good conditions but yeah take it out and try it in different modes. So you should find most GPS is now have really good battery life certainly. I'd say mine, which use double A batteries will last 12 hours if I use it conservatively but I've got the screen on the whole time probably last six hours or a little bit less to knowing you're forward to the own unit is what I'd recommend. But they are reliable. They're very good. But when the battery runs out. Thanks. Thanks child. Got another one here. Do you change any of your techniques for winter mountaineering. I think why don't we put that to the three of us and we can all add one way thing and it would change. I'm going to take the easy one and go fast. Yeah, actually, I do change a little bit and or something more aware of and perhaps is that as we get colder weather and I'm working with big gloves. It's easy when you've got depth of hands to deal with your your mapping compass, but you know in the King on Platon a blown blizzard. I want to make sure that definitely practice the big gloves on and a map case everything's much bulkier and potentially goggles as well when it's more difficult to see down. So practice and the better weather before you get into that full on winter environment for me is something I do. John. Yeah, so my wife I just a little bit then build we talk about gloves using gloves. Oh, sorry. And anything you change navigationally in the winter to summer. Yeah. And I was just talking about making sure you practice with bulky gloves and goggles that type of thing. Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah. I'm just making sure that you. I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll stop with them. I'll stop with the story in there. I went on a rescue many, many years ago on the, on the, on the Ben McDowee plateau, and it was three cadets, and it was November and it's a time of year where in November you can either have stable high pressure and you can glorious weather, crisp and cold, but clear, or winter can come, you know, and it can come really severe and we can have some of our coldest and most largest months of snowfall. And unfortunately, this is one of those where these three cadets have gone out as before smartphones and getting upstate weather forecasts, and they were doing a two day trip. And they got caught up by the, they caught up by the weather that night. And they had to, and they couldn't get to where they wanted to camp. They had to sort of sleep out in the open in their sleeping bags, sort of baby out in sort of like, you know, really bad conditions and the rescue team had to go in. We picked them up to them a really severely hypothermic, and we managed to walk them out. And when that happened with them, you know, they were going, Oh, you know, I can't believe, you know, have, you know, the weather, you know, I can believe that that it's in so quickly, etc. And, you know, I've never got lost before I'm really confident with my navigation. And just on a bit more questioning is like, Well, how much navigation have you done in those in winter. Oh, no, I've never done any navigation in winter it's only ever been in summer. So, and what what happened was in this summer walk, it turned into winter conditions. So, you know, when it comes to walking out in winter, the best way to practice for winter is to really be to really make sure your summer skills, summer hill walking skills are really sharp, but then also getting out in some in some bad summer weather. Yeah. And then it means then that when we get into winter weather it won't feel so bad because you know you've sort of been there before a little bit in those summer conditions. And basically what you're doing is you sort of, you know, you're cutting your teeth in kind of say fish conditions for you so that when you go into winter you've already got that some of that experience of your belt. Yeah. So for me that would be that would be key, rather than just going hey I'm going to go to winter and expecting everything to work because because guaranteed you know it'll feel challenging. Cool. Thanks, John. And a couple more. Um, you know, it's just, sorry, it's just scrolled up. Where are we? You've all given it once. I thought there was a planning one there. Somebody's asking what type of GPS we recommend. Again, it's personal preference really. We all the technology I think will be hard find, have pushed to find a bad GPS, but often the more expensive ones with all the fancy features are actually potential be a bit more complicated than what you need. The range isn't always the best for our environment and what we're doing. And any other top tips for staying safe in the winter. And I guess that ties in with the navigation in the winter as well. It's not just being able to practice the techniques but offering the terrain. So for example in the summer, I will handrail or use an edge to follow along in the winter. I tend not to do that. I'm super cautious of edges in the winter. And I try to build my navigational lines where I'm not following along an edge and as opposed to in the summer, whether it seems appropriate. I was just reading through the questions again. I'll answer some questions on the two GPS devices to come up to me. Again, I'm answering this from experience of having quite an old GPS and actually what I did was I upgraded it because more modern GPS is work quicker and better battery life. There are some more additional features so new things do come in and all the time they're adapting them. So it's more to become modernize my stuff. But it's still the old GPS still gains really accurate reading. So there's no problem with that. I just have better features on the new one. It's not necessary. My current GPS, if I could show you, is quite corroded on the outside. So I've used it a lot in sea kayaking, but I got that about 10 years ago now. I think it was and it still operates as well as it did 10 years ago. Great. I think that says for the questions, John and Giles. John, that was an excellent talk. Thanks very much. I think it will hand over mark just to round us up and thanks very much everyone for coming. I'll hand over your mark. Thank you guys. Thanks. Thanks very much, John, Bill and Giles. Really good talk there. And thank you everyone for all your questions as well and for joining us this evening. Please do check out the more lodges courses if you want to hear anything further and get some training under your belt this summer. Yeah, you won't regret it. That's for sure. So great. Thanks again guys. Thanks everyone for joining in. Good night.