A small group of Dark Peak Fell Runners met at the Woodhead Mountain Rescue barn for an intensive day learning navigation skills. It was a lovely autumn morning, the weather bright and sunny – nice for running but making navigation too easy!
The day started with an indoor theory session covering topics such as grid references, interpreting contour lines, estimating running speed over different terrain and route choice. The runners then marked a series of small features on their maps before setting off to see if they could find them!
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| Where are we?! |
Amused walkers stifled their grins as the runners ran past counting their paces for a hundred metres then turned round to do it again at a different speed. Other topics including bearings, backbearings and resections were covered on the move as lots of instruction was given in the morning session.
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| We should be over there! |
Over a working lunch back at the barn we discussed different scales of map and prepared the route for the afternoon session – this time over more featureless moorland terrain. Then it was outdoors again to practice the mysterious skills of setting and thumbing the map, walking and running on a set bearing, aiming off and attack points plus more counting paces.
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| There should be a path somewhere |
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| Set, thumb, bearing, go! |
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| Found it! |
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| Navigation – not just a boy thing |
The afternoon finished back indoors with a discussion about equipment for fell running and safety on the hills.
All in all a successful day and hopefully a dozen runners who have developed some skills to enable then to run with confidence in the hills.
Shame about the weather though!
If you would like to develop your navigation skills, either on your own or in a group contact me to arrange a session:contact me