An interesting thought about how digital mapping is reducing our eons-old ability to navigate by spatial awareness…

http://www.harveymaps.co.uk/acatalog/Spatial-Awareness.html

Interesting that. This is something I’ve ben banging on about a bit with the Scouts, trying to build these kind of skills cos they’re absolutely of the generation where they see utter reliance on technology/phones as completely normal.

Last week we were orienteering in a local National Trust park, with loads of features on the ground in quite a small area to navigate by – a massive house, a lake, a car park, a large hunting lodge on the top of a hill, some woods etc etc, and I was adamant that the Scouts would get the map and nothing else (i.e. no phones, compasses or anything), so they would learn to equate the features on the ground to the features on the map.

John Shuttleworth agrees

I wonder about this. Starting from a fundamentalist old skool attitude towards digital navigation, I’ve ended up embracing it because of work, and also heading out on daily local rides over the two years of lockdown – the OS app on my bars was more convenient than unfolding a paper map when I took a turn I’d never been down before.

I can’t remember the last time I didn’t know exactly where I was, but it has changed the way I navigate. I pay less attention to gradients and landforms around me, and I realised with a shock on a recent Exmoor trip that I’d forgotten to pack the map…

On the topic of spatial awareness, it always strikes me in supermarkets how totally unaware people are of what’s going on around them. Which is fine, until they complete their purchases and (invariably) go out and get into a tonne of metal…

Certainly my sense of where I am in the country (when driving) has shrivelled since using a sat-nav. I’m trying to relearn how to navigate long journeys with the map, just because.

I remember driving from London to Glen Coe navigating solely by a post it note on the steering wheel listing all the roads in order. Did used to know the sequence off by heart, but not any more. A82 Crainlarich seems to ring a bell….

Certainly my sense of where I am in the country (when driving) has shrivelled since using a sat-nav.

I can relate to this. When MrsIHN and I did our big European road trip, we didn’t have satnav but I did all the driving and she did all the navigating with road atlases. Most of the time I could not have pointed to roughly where we were in any of the countries were in, I had no idea.

I remember driving from London to Glen Coe navigating solely by a post it note on the steering wheel listing all the roads in order.

I did this sort of thing loads of times. I also had to stop by the side of the road many times to try and understand where I was, and can remember turning up to at least one work meeting because I got hopelessly lost. 😀

footflaps
Full Member
I remember driving from London to Glen Coe navigating solely by a post it note on the steering wheel listing all the roads in order. Did used to know the sequence off by heart, but not any more.

route carding – Was drilled into us in the army doing this before heading off, no idea if it’s still covered in the sylabus. Cambrian patrol had a part where you had to navigate only with a route card – this was horiible as it was always crap weather so any features and landmakrs you noted you couldn;t see.

When i go out somewhere new i try to have a small wonder around to get my bearings – doesn’t always work mind..

Still use “route carding” for motorcycle trips but back it up by planning the route on google maps & street view to trigger memory. Very rarely don’t have a map except in car, thankfully gone are the days of arriving at the first petrol station & thumbing through their town A to Z

I’m sure a read a few years ago that the answer was effectively ‘no’. Backed up by proper scientific research. (I haven’t got time to track the article/paper down.) IIRC whilst we might be rusty or out of practice if you force people to do it they soon pick up the navigational / spatial awareness aspects, whether having prior experience or not. I think because technology has become so dominant we just don’t *need* to do it on a population basis. Obviously this has implications for those outliers where they are stuck out on the fells, closing weather, no signal/battery and no idea how to use the map they’ve brought along… But, on a cohort/population basis, it does work. I’m not advocating not learning how to use a map and compass btw, I think you owe it to yourself, your travel companions and the MRT that might end up looking for you…

I do however still have a Post-it note (stored in a long disused Filofax from 1991) from my first Winter Mountaineering Course at Glenmore Lodge mid 90s. IIRC our instructors were UIAGM guides Dave Etherington and Chris Forrest….

Anyway, the Glenmore Lodge 7 steps to plan each leg of a trip were:

1. Estimate Bearing (in case map is upside down)
2. Take the bearing using a compass
3. Measure the distance / convert to paces
4. Guesstimate the time
5. Make a mental note of the contours – are you climbing/descending/traversing
6. Make a mental note of any features you expect to see (not a lot in winter)
7. Make a mental note of any hazards along the way (close to a cliff edge etc)

Still know that list by heart!

Then there are some door key codes from Glenmore Lodge which I hope are now out of date!

[url=https://flic.kr/p/2nnRdU3]Navigation steps[/url] by Ben Freeman, on Flickr

1. Estimate Bearing (in case map is upside down)

I’m being thick, but I don’t get this one.

I wonder why a publisher of paper maps writes an article suggesting we should use more paper maps…

1. Estimate Bearing (in case map is upside down)

In winter you tend to use a small laminated map and you’re often being battered by winds etc so hard to focus. It’s very easy to take a perfect bearing using the compass (add/subtract 5 degrees as it was back then) but *not* realise you’re holding the map upside down and your bearing is 180 degrees out. You’re focused on aligning the compass body with the grid lines etc.

So, the solution is to guess the rough direction (N, S, E, W) etc in your head based on your rough knowledge of the area, eg We should be heading NE back to the ski area. Then when you take your bearing and it comes in at 150 degrees, you can go ‘hang on, that doesn’t look right’…..

It’s probably a bit winter mountaineering specific, but still a good sanity check.

I wonder why a publisher of paper maps writes an article suggesting we should use more paper maps…

I forgot to add to that list we always carried at least two maps and two compasses, in case one got blown away by a gust!

Gotcha, ta.

The guy who plans our club road rides is real old school. He has a tiny home made roller with 15mm wide roll of paper wrapped round it with minimal route instructions.
However most rides he has to ask me exactly where we are as I am the only person in the Luddite CC to have any form of GPS.
Mind you , we are the youth section, 66-75, the rest are even older.

He has a tiny home made roller with 15mm wide roll of paper wrapped round it with minimal route instructions.

Roadbook style – still used in motorbike enduros etc.