Navigation Skills Training Courses in The Lake District. March 29th & 30th 2014.

Last weekend saw us running the first of our Navigation Skills Training Courses in The Lake District. For those of you who are interested in learning the techniques of how to use a map & compass to get around in the mountains then these courses are for you. They are a very competitively priced £80 per person for the weekend and the use of our maps is included in the fee!

One of these courses will be running each month from now until June and they then start again in September. You can check out the course dates and make your booking here.

We had a great turnout of nine persons booked on to this Navigation Skills Training Course. We meet at Staveley in the southern part of The Lake District and spent day one learning map reading and compass skills very close to there on  Green Quarter Fell where there are all manner of features to be found. We started the course progressing through from orientating the map, to measuring distance & pacing, following a linear route (a bridleway) looking at "tickoff" features before learning about Grid References over Lunch. By the time photo two was taken, we were already using a our compasses to walk on a bearing. We would spend the rest of day one using these techniques before discussing the art of timing and Naismiths Rule and then heading back to the vehicles at around 5pm. The day had been dry and sunny with some haze, but a still fairly chilly, easterly breeze.

The next day - Sunday saw us driving further up the valley and parking near to the foot of the east side of the Kentmere Horseshoe.

As you can see in photo three, the weather was much better for the second day of our Navigation Skills Training Course in The Lake District. Not only was it warmer & sunnier, but there was virtually no breeze whatsoever making it quite hot a times.

We started off by using the compass to identify some unknown features from our known location before heading off up another linear route - the bridleway between Kentmere and Longsleddale. After travelling along this for 2km, we turned & headed up the ridge leading to Shipman Knotts continuing to locate tick off features along the way.

Our Navigation Skills Training Courses in The Lake District make use of the Ordnance Survey 1:25 and 1:50'000 scales. Whilst on Shipman Knotts, we were able to practice identifying features that were off the 1:25k maps we were using but were visible on the 1:50k scale map instead! Everyone did remarkably well in adapting to the smaller & less detailed scale to be found on a 1:50k map and everyone was successful in identifying the points we were looking for - good effort!

Photo four shows everyone discussing our location at a spring just to the south of Kentmere Pike Summit. We had used a combination of walking on a bearing, pacing and timing using Naismiths Rule to accurately pinpoint this place without any problems.

After continuing on to Kentmere Pike, we made our way down into the upper Kentmere Valley before returning via another bridleway back to where the vehicles were parked.

Everyone learned lots of useful new skills during this weekend Navigation Skills Training Course in The Lake District and all agreed that it was superb value for money. If you would like to book your place then contact us here - we have lots of places available on these great upcoming courses during the next few months.