Navigation - Sat-nav or Map?

“Navigation? Simple. There’s an app for that.”

I have my own ‘app’ in the form of an enlarged, easy to read road atlas. It is far better than the rude interruptions from the voice of the sat-nav in the middle of a conversation and making me lose my drift. It’s more reliable than the sat-nav, as well.

We used a sat-nav, or whatever it is on my husband’s phone when we were touring in our caravan last summer. Travelling from The Machars in Dumfries & Galloway to Maybole in Ayrshire, I wasn’t looking forward to the A77 and A78 which are always busy at any time of day. I wasn’t driving, but it’s still worrying as a passenger, ahem, back seat driver. I was saved the anxiety by the route the sat-nav chose to take. Miles and miles of single-track, harem scarem road, cutting through the lesser known depths of Galloway Forest Park, eventually releasing us into the freedom of rural Ayrshire. Not the best road for towing a caravan and we felt relieved to be unscathed, and alone. In all those miles we hadn’t encountered another vehicle. Drivers were either wise to avoid that way, or they knew we were out. It was a bad experience which made us wary of the sat-nav and we kept to the A roads after that.

On a visit to the Outer Hebrides – no caravan, just car and cottages – we travelled north from touring the Uists to base ourselves in the Isle of Harris to explore Harris and Lewis. We were in a hilly area. The highest mountain in the Outer Hebrides was near, The Clisham at 799 metres, standing majestically over our cottage. Out one day for a drive and a look around, I was navigating using an OS map. We were aiming for the west coast. I was struggling with reading the tiny details on the map and soon thought we’d – I’d – gone wrong somewhere and couldn’t find any landmarks matching the map. We were on the cliff-edge road of a mountain and I was so scared that I couldn’t speak. I was literally stunned into silence. There was relief eventually when we found ourselves descending towards a small beach, a couple of cars and a handful of people. With map in hand, I explained that we’d become lost and sought their help. This lovely family came to our aid, turned the map the right way up, and pointed to where we were. They set us back on the right track, which involved a return journey back up the mountain road, but at least we were on the inside lane this time. I hope they didn’t ridicule us too much when they went home to Scandinavia. Oops. Don’t trust me with a hard to read OS map in the Hebrides, or anywhere in the world.

When I was in junior school, probably aged nine or ten, we were tasked with doing a project on something of our own choice. Girls favoured pop music or fashion. Boys chose cars or the armed forces. There were other things picked, but looking back, how gender categorised we all must have been. Of all the things in the world, I picked compasses. This was because there was a picture of a mariner’s compass on the front of a world atlas at home, and it fascinated me. The project didn’t get beyond two items, the mariner’s compass and a Girl Guides one. Good drawings, though, even if I say so myself. We’ve come a long way since navigating by a compass was all we had, especially at sea. The digital era has taken us over in the name of progress.

I’ll stick with the easy to read road atlas, even if it does weigh a ton on my knee in the car. I’m about to navigate us to Scotland then to Warwickshire, so I’ll be missing, but hopefully not lost. Back soon.

 Navigation

Lost in South Harris
When the map was upside down
And we got mixed up.

Study the road map
Give confident directions
And have a Plan B.

Work out the distance,
Choose where to make cmfort stops
To break the journey.


Rude interruption,
Strict, assertive instructions.
Who needs a sat-nav?

PMW 2024

 Thanks for reading, Pam x

 

 

 

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Compass Points

I didn't know that there are 32 compass points, each marking off 11.25 degrees of our happy planetary sphere and each with its official title as depicted in the 'compass rose' diagram below. Well blow me, where does that leave the classic 1959 spy movie North by Northwest ? 

It would appear there were seven legitimate options to choose from in the quadrant between north and west...and north by northwest is not one of them. Poor form that, Alfred Hitchcock, MGM and all. 😂

32 point compass rose

Seriously, who hasn't either owned or used a compass? Perhaps to orient yourself when Scouting For Girls, navigating Secret Water, possibly pursuing on a Journey To The East, maybe a  Flight To Arras, or even while Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy. 

Prior to the development of the compass you'd have had to attempt all such feats by reading celestial bodies, observing well-known landmarks or trusting in the flightpaths of migrant birds. However, the invention of the compass made it possible to determine a heading when the sky was obscured, no landmarks were in sight and migrating birds were out of season.

The first primitive compasses were created in China some 2000 years ago using lodestone (a naturally magnetised mineral) which was observed both to attract iron and, when suspended in water or oil (as was the common design at the time) would align itself with the earth's magnetic field. On account of this latter property, it was given the charmingly descriptive name 'south facing fish ' I paused momentarily to query why not north facing fish? But I suppose it's just a convention of heads and tails.

Interestingly, although the Chinese led the way in the understanding of magnetism,  those early compasses were used not so much for navigation as for geomancy (my word of the week), for assisting in the art of Feng Shui to literally ensure a house was favourably oriented (and why not occidented?) in relation to ley lines or the flow of powerful magic forces. And it was Arab travellers to China who first brought compass technology to the west (or occident) approximately 1000 years ago.

Compass needles by now were little strips of iron that had been magnetised by being stroked by lodestone, often still suspended in a liquid within a circular container marked with the four cardinal points N, S, E, W and used primarily on board ships for navigation.

500 years further along the timeline came the development of the dry compass with its three key components of a freely turning magnetised needle mounted on a pin above a calibrated 'rose', all enclosed in a small box with a flat base and a glass lid, the essence of the compasses we know and use today for taking bearings and orienteering, though plastic casings are the norm. 

As for the sophistication of those 32 points on the rose, that was the work of maritime engineers in the Mediterranean some time in the 16th century and the points were all named after winds (see below).

And there you have it. The only bit I've skipped is about magnetic north, which is a shifty blighter and best left for another day. Before  I get to the poem however, here's an on theme musical bonus from talented American guitarist and singer/ songwriter Molly Tuttle: Take The Journey  Enjoy.

Given that it is Armistice Day today and Remembrance Sunday tomorrow I've written something harking back to the First World War and imagined one of the thousands of lost and lonely deaths of young soldiers. In this case, specifically Americans, many still in their teens, who when the USA joined late in the war were dispatched up to the front lines in the summer of 1918 in northern France as part of the last great tactical gamble to repulse the Germans who had gained vast swathes of land in their spring offensive and to drive the enemy away from the outskirts of Paris and back to the east. There were 10,000 American casualties alone in the Battle of Belleau Wood.

lost forever in Belleau Wood (June 1918)

A Private Dying

The rain, the constant stumbling pain,

sound of sustained firing, friend or foe?

He'd taken some hits, he knew, compass

shot to bits, unsteady groping from tree

to sodden tree and tears too now. Why

did he think of Babes in the Wood? 

Murder in the Dark more like, though

he'd never imagined this as a child

an ocean and a short lifetime away

when he'd played out with  his pals

in the walnut orchard at twilight till

his mother called him in. Blood

 

rose in his throat, bubbling on his lips

tasty as copper, and shaken by a palsy 

of shivering his legs gave way. All lost, 

he thought, where did I go wrong? Some

son I've turned out to be. Forgive me

mother, father. Remember me at home.

No sooner had he kissed the earth goodbye

than his spirit slipped through patchy skies,

a sliver rippling into the circling shoal

of departed souls, south pointing fish all

twisting like an unruly silver tide at

the bidding of some wanton bloody moon.

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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