Navigation is a perishable skill, so we have to keep practicing it to stay familiar with the techniques.
Here's an idea for something that you can do, anywhere. This example is from a trip taking my daughter to an appointment - I had a spare hour, so decided that I'd practice my map memory skills.
Map memory is remembering your route without referring to the map. This gives more confidence, and more enjoyment of the journey.
This is what the final journey looked like, and on the face of it, it's quite a complicated shape. But here is my 'story' from the OS map that helps me remember the journey (5km). Even without the OS map, the track above is possible to follow with this description.
Turn left on the big road, right at the cross roads.
Find the public footpath, and stay left leaving the ring contours to the right.
Find the hard left onto a track at the Golf Club.
Don't go back on myself, but take the right hand turn towards an aerial.
Find my way towards the foot bridge over the big road, find the mile stone.
Next right round the back of Plas Pengais and find the Well.
Contour to the footpath, and down to the cross roads.
First big left to find the car.
That practice in an urban environment is really useful to have in a wild environment too. It's keeping my skills current by allowing me to practice and remember my way of memorising a journey.
Picking different features that you're confident of seeing is a wonderful way to wander through the outdoors without having a nose glued into the map.
Why not try it somewhere that you know and are confident that you can get back to where you started from?
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