Navigation Skills Training Day and overnight Wild Camping in The Lake District. 15th & 16th August 2015.

Iain was joined by Nick Charles on the morning of August 15th. Nick had driven up from The Wirral to join Iain for one whole day and a night in the Lake District Mountains.

This booking originally came about through Nick's wife having searched the internet looking for a Christmas Gift with a difference. She found our website and bought one of our Gift Certificates as a present. If anyone is looking for a gift idea with a difference then our certificates for activities and skills training Courses in the outdoors are the perfect idea!!

So what did we get up to on Nicks 24 hour course. Well, we jumped into the Land Rover and took a high road to get us into an area where we wouldn't have so far to walk to get to a peaceful & relatively unknown wild camping place. Photo one sees Nick on the walk in to the camp site and photo two was taken shortly after we had reached the area, found a nice dry patch of ground next to the stream; and pitched our tents.

What did we do for the rest of the day? Well - read on!

Having pitched camp; and gotten some early lunch, basically the rest of the afternoon was organised as a one day Navigation Skills Training Session for Nick who already possessed  reasonable Map Reading & Navigational Skills ability but who needed to polish these skills up.

We started as we often do by discussing map orientation; and then measuring distance and pacing it on the ground. We actually started doing this when we left the Land Rover and not after camp had been set up; and Nick did quite a good job of getting us to the designated camping area.

After a recap about the importance of being to locate or give a Grid Reference, Iain set Nick off to find grid references through a combination of finding a bearing, pacing the distance and using line of sight features for accuracy. We spent the rest of the afternoon navigating our way around a section of the Kentmere Horseshoe (photo three) before arriving back at camp at about 5:30pm

Photo four sees Nick enjoying a bit of supper at our campsite. The weather during the day had been a bit mixed and possibly a bit wetter than forecast but Nick had done well at the tasks set for him during our Lake District Mountain Navigation Skills Training Day. All that remain to do now was to enjoy a night of peace and solitude in the mountains at our camping spot.

Iain had a wander around the locality in the early evening as he often likes to do when wild camping whilst Nick had a snooze!

Nearby, a lot of tree planting has been done thanks to to EU reforestation initiative and it is good to see areas fenced off containing a good range of indigenous broad leaved trees which, if the sheep can be kept out - may well see the area return to a degree to the way it looked before man chopped down all of the trees. How many people are aware that The Lake District's mountains used to be well wooded up to a height of 1700 feet!!

Eventually, as it started to get dark, we both headed into our respective tents to spend a peaceful night before being woken by the light in the morning. Having struck camp, returned to the Land Rover and then reversed our route to Kendal, Nick was on his way back to The Wirral by 09:30 on Sunday having thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

This Navigation Skills Training day plus an overnight camp in the Lake District mountains is an example of one of our "bespoke" courses - tailored to the clients requirements. Our motto is "Giving you what you want" and we will do our best to arrange any outdoor experience required - no matter how unusual it might be!

If it can be done - we will do it! So, contact us to arrange your bespoke activity course or Skills Training Course  in The Lake District. We are here to help and look forward to working with you.

More comments and photos relating to this course can be found on our Facebook page here.