Working at home today, a bit of a break with the arrival of the postie and a book for me from Amazon. A quick flick through and I realise I need help. Cocked hats? Naismith's rule? Eh?
Thursday, 4 December 2008
I need help
Working at home today, a bit of a break with the arrival of the postie and a book for me from Amazon. A quick flick through and I realise I need help. Cocked hats? Naismith's rule? Eh?
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12 comments:
we're obviously going to be put into different groups then ;)
that's an excellent book choice but i still find that there's only so much i can take in from reading. best get out there and start pace counting with your best cocked hat on ;)
I'm lucky having the hills right on my doorstep but it does mean I don't go off and explore that much, bit lazy sticking to the bits I know. Time for some adventures to the other side of the hill I think.
Naismiths Rule is best for hill walking rather than running/races I would have thought. Best thing to do is just go out and practice relating the map to the terrain around you, all the time even if you know where you are going. In my case I have to do it to help with bringing the contour lines to life rather than a brown mass of squiggles. Bearings and other rules are really secondary to this. Its when I stop paying attention to the detail that I have to start backtracking and risk getting lost.
Cocked hats? No idea!
Naismith's Rule is easy, you obviously weren't a girl guide!
As for Cocked hat I had to google that one.
Using a map on areas you know to get used to contour lines is great, I've been riding from home and just doing some new bits but taking the map with me.
I've had a further look at the book, Naismith's probably won't apply I'll get out and establish a timing chart for myself. Cocked Hat's I get now I've re-read it. I can do compass bearings and I'm not bad at reading the landscape and matching map contours with features. A bit more practice and I reckon I'll be OK.
I'm going to do a few runs on Great Hill, I don't know that area terribly well so I'll have to use the map and compass, but I know it well enough to hopefully not get horribly lost and become a mountain rescue statistic!
I don't know Great Hill either, its on my list of places to practice navigation. I'm guessing running like cycling is harder than walking as you cover more distance in the time.
I find comparing contours to the land hard, I've been trying to practice about once a week, but missed todays session.
Maybe we should have a go out on Great Hill together, you can ride I'll run!
Sounds good, although I assume great hill is boggy at the moment and after tonights ride I might be pushing a lot!
One side of Great Hill is exceedingly boggy with deep ruts(the Belmont Road side, think the water runs off more that side), still an absolute hoot to run/walk/hop/squelch on but you wouldn't ride much of it, particularly the closer to the road you were. I managed not to get lost round there so you'll be fine! I want to do the track from The summit of Great Hill back to White Coppice on a bike, it would be ace even when boggy as a descent its an absolute blast to run down.
After I did my nav course I made a small chart with Naismith timings on one side and my pacing counts on the other. I laminated it (ahem) and attached it to my compass lanyard. I also have five little toggles for counting off pacing - guess how many times I've done it in anger? Yep none! I have had to take a bearing on a very claggy Fairfield summit to make sure we dropped back into the correct valley once, that's about the only time I've had to rely on what I learned so far. I feel the need to practice now!
i find the harveys bmc maps really good for getting used to contours as they colour-code them in blocks. being able to pace count/estimate distance is really useful for mm as you're likely to get a map of a different scale than your used to
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