

Most people will be quite confident of their navigation skills on a warm, clear, summer's day or while following a well-marked footpath. The problem is that these scenarios often do not last long: the weather can change in an alarmingly brief time, signs run out, tracks disappear or are impassable.

There is only one way to be really confident in navigating in all conditions, and that is to use micronavigation – an easy-to-learn technique of land navigation. You navigate in a series of small distances, called legs, and focus on the immediate features in your landscape to continually ascertain position: this minimises the chance for error.

All navigators make small errors in compass reading, correcting for magnetic declination, and then in both judging distance travelled and how far they have drifted off course. The further you travel on a bearing the greater the error. So by employing short legs these mistakes are continually corrected.

Micronavigation builds upon your innate ability to create a greater awareness of your immediate environment sight, sound, smell and touch and relating this information to the use of robust and reliable non-specialist equipment: a map and baseplate compass.

Micronavigation can be used in the most difficult of terrains including alpine, arctic, desert, forest, Jungle, mountain, shoreline and urban and is employed by specialists varying from search and rescue (SAR) teams to the special Forces.

Micronavigation can also be augmented with, yet is not dependent upon: altimeters, celestial navigation, environmental navigation and global navigation systems (GNS). Different types of navigation may be used in isolation, but just as the Phoenicians relied heavily upon celestial navigation augmented with environmental navigation, today the expert land navigator utilises and combines as many different types as possible.

You will already have a wealth of navigational tools at your disposal which you have been developing and adding to since birth. For example, collecting features that confirm your route is a technique you probably employ everyday travelling to and from work – from noting significant traffic junctions, to registering the noise of the train brake as you approach the station from where you will continue the next leg of your journey. My objective (in this short excerpt) is to break with convention and reawaken these innate skills in the natural environment.

From infancy we learn to navigate our environment using all of our senses. Most navigational techniques simply mirror innate skills.

A major step to becoming a skilled navigator is when you stop thinking about yourself as the reference; instead relate the world around you and the orientation and position of everything in it.

To instruct navigation is simply to formalise these skills and extend them with the mastery of man-made tools. One of the single biggest mistakes that people can make when they teach formal navigation with a map and compass is to focus on the use of these tools and to ignore the individual's natural skills.

Learn to use the wealth of information your surroundings offer you in helping determine where you are. Learning to read environmental clues is a key component of micronavigation – they are invaluable.

To start with, take a walk on a route you are very familiar with and run through the following check list in the field until it becomes second nature. You will be surprised what else you become aware of – add your own observations.

Wind direction often changes frequently over the period of a day so look for permanent signs of the prevailing wind's direction, especially trees and shrubs whose branches are bent to shape by the directional wind – they can act as radial arms and help you determine the other cardinals of the compass.

Prior to entering an area, determine which way the prevailing winds blow and if they are seasonal. This can be found easily from many sources ranging from meteorological internet sites to local farmers.

Wind speed generally increases the higher you climb and a quick technique to predict the speed in the UK is to count the isobars, if they are 4mb apart (as in Met Office forecasts), covering the UK and allow 16 kph (10 mph) for each isobar: this will be your rough wind speed at about 300 m (1,000 ft) above sea level.

Face the direction the wind is blowing, close your eyes and smell the air. Think carefully about the scents you can detect:

• traffic fumes suggest a road  
• the scent of a forest  
• farmyard smells  
• industrial/factory fumes  
• in urban environments, a tube station/subway entrance.

Now look at your map in the direction of the blowing wind and see if any of these features are present.

As you gain height the temperature of the air decreases. The amount it decreases depends primarily upon the amount of water vapour in the air and the extremes of these are:

• Dry air found in deserts and high mountain ranges, temperature changes at an average rate 10° C/1,000 m (<10% relative humidity)  
• Clammy, muggy air found in rainforests, temperature changes by an average of 5° C/1,000 m (saturated air with >90% relative humidity).

Think about where the climate in the region you will be navigating in fits between the two extremes given above and remember that as you lose height the temperature increases by the same values.

In winter conditions look for where the frost has melted on rocks, this will be the side where the sun has shone the most.

Take note of what you have walked over – a marsh, sand, grass or heath – and compare it to the vegetation marked on your map. Look for the edges of forests and forest clearings, also the type (coniferous or deciduous), and relate these to where you think you are on the map. Learn the symbols for these different types of vegetation (refer to the legend at the side of your map.

Different plants grow in different habitats and at different altitudes. Prior to embarking upon your trip learn about the plants of the region you will be visiting, how to identify them and where they are likely to be found. At the highest elevations, trees cannot grow and vegetation becomes alpine. Just below the tree line, one may find subalpine forests of needleleaf trees, which can withstand cold, dry conditions. In regions with dry climates, the tendency of mountains to have higher precipitation as well as lower temperatures also provides for varying conditions.

Remember, though, that landscapes change with time, so check your map's age, and consider things that may have altered the environment, such as the clearing of land for new developments, forest fires, farming usage and so forth.

Before your journey, mark areas of different geology on your map – this will help give you an indication of where you are. This information is readily available on the internet.

Can you hear streams, rivers, waterfalls or traffic? To enhance your hearing cup your hands behind your ears, it will help you identify the direction of the sound. This effect can be dramatic, detecting sounds which ordinarily you cannot hear. With practice this method of direction-finding can be accurate to within ±10°.

• Cup both hands behind your ears.  
• Rotate your body, moving your feet and keeping your head fixed forwards, towards the sound.  
• Make small adjustments by moving with your feet to where the sound is most intense.  
• Keep standing and take a bearing in the direction you are facing.

While navigating in dense woodland, searching for a lost party who were giving six whistle blasts repeated at five-minute intervals, this method was used to find them.

You can either identify commercial aircraft flying overhead using your binoculars or, more commonly, by the contrails (short for 'condensation trails', sometimes called vapour trails or distrails) they leave. The exhaust from aircraft engines create these artificial cloud of condensed water vapour and, depending on atmospheric conditions, they remain observable for anything from a few seconds or minutes, to many hours. All commercial aircraft fly along predetermined air corridors on specific routes and frequently these run in one direction only. As a result, if you know the direction of these flight paths you can use the contrails to determine the other cardinals of the compass. Prior to embarking upon your journey, check which flight paths exist for aircraft in the area. You can find these on internet sites such as www.flightradar24.com. Military aircraft do not use these corridors and tend to fly lower than commercial aircraft.

All aircraft are required to have a green navigation light on the right side, a red navigation light on the left side, and a white navigation light on the tail which must be on from sunset to sunrise. Additionally, most commercial aircraft have bright flickering white strobe lights (to light up clouds) which can be seen from the ground. Using these lights you can determine which direction that aircraft is moving at night and, if you know the air corridors, you can determine the other cardinals of the compass.

The proliferation of wireless communications has resulted in the building of many broadcast masts and towers. These are clearly visible both during daylight hours and at night as they are usually situated on the highest elevation of land in the area. Consequently they are excellent to use as attack points (each leg of your route starts from a known point and leads to an identifiable point on the map – known as an attack point).

International Civil Aviation Organisation rules stipulate that all structures above 60 m (200 ft) must use night-time aircraft obstruction lights. Typically these are red (constant or slow flashing) and situated on the top of these structures and at predetermined intervals down it.

As most of these towers are a relatively recent introduction, with new ones continually being erected, this is another important reason to use up-to-date maps. Where a structure is not marked on your map take the time to add their location and their height (using a grease pencil or on your digital mapping). Government sites such as www.sitefinder.ofcom.org.uk detail both their exact location and height.

Other tall structures usually located on high elevations include water tanks and wind turbines. Aircraft obstruction lighting is also used on electricity pylons, chimneys, tall buildings and cranes.

Many overhead power lines run for great distances in the same direction and can be used as parallel features, to handrail beside (a handrail is an easily identifiable linear feature on your map). Prior to embarking upon navigating study a map of the area and search for these. In addition, there are common types of pylon which are all exactly the same height. By learning to recognise these you can use them to judge distance to/from.

Check the times of year for migrating flocks of birds – there are numerous websites where you can find this information. Learn to identify them and know which direction they are likely to be flying in.

If there are migrating animals in the region you will be navigating, again find out which species you are likely to see and the routes they follow.

Researchers at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany have found that herds of cattle and deer tend to align themselves ±5° from a line from north to south.

A westerly wind blows east, northerly blows south and so forth. It is better to stand and feel which way the wind is blowing, turn to face it with your map set and see what is ahead of you on the map.

Professional trackers continually hone and refine their ability to read environmental clues.

Buy books on the local plants and trees of your area; they are interesting to read and help bring your environment alive.

A bright white light seen travelling across the sky at night may be the space station! see www.heavens-above.com.

The surface of the earth's reflection on the bottom of clouds can indicate the type of terrain beneath them.

If the natural light is failing, search the sky above the horizon for a patch of light which could be the reflected light from a small town – the light pollution from a small town at night is visible from 15 km, the light from a city from 50 km.

In the arctic regions the colour of the underside of clouds gives you clues as to the type of land beneath:

• black – open water, snow-free ground and forestation  
• white – snow fields and sea ice  
• grey – new ice  
• mottled grey – pack ice or drifted snow.

Religious buildings are usually aligned in a specific way to the cardinals of the compass. Christian churches are generally aligned east–west, with the high altar on the eastern side. Most mosques contain a niche in a wall that indicates the qiblah, which is the direction of a point in Mecca towards which a Muslim prays during salah. The latitude/longitude of this point is 21°43'N 39°06'E – so before you venture out, check on Google Earth where it is in relation to the area you will be navigating in.

