With the forecast looking amazing for the weekend ahead, I was in rather high spirits as I set off to meet with Simon, Jillian & Brenton for our weekend navigation course.
All were new to map & compass so we had a nice blank canvas and no bad habits.
Day 1 was spent around the Elterwater area, we ventured onto Dow Bank & Silver howe. Contours, map features, orienteering the map, scales, bearings, and timings were all covered and practised aplenty.
The sun shone loads, likely giving us all some mild sunburn! We enjoyed a long day out though, soaking up the far reaching views and enjoying being out on the fells.
Day 2 began with a refresher of the previous day, and soon after pacing was introduced and used to help us locate some quite indistinct features such as ring contours and re-entrants. Being off-path meant it was easy to find a quiet place for lunch with a view, before we continued on to the summit of Pike O' Blisco, and another food / view stop. Seeing the Langdale Pikes from here is absolutely breathtaking.
We then switched back to using contour interpretation as our navigational aid, this had us tracking down stream junctions and small tarns, over large distances. Being able to do this makes navigating more sociable and easier overall.
We had by now circumnavigated Cold Pike and time was pressing on, so it was time to navigate back to the road.
To most enjoyable days spent in very good company.