Yes, that’s what I’m affectionately known as at home but this week I am exceptionally proud of myself and I’m going to tell you why………..I have all the gear and I now know what to do with it!! Henry the Navigator has absolutely nothing on me! 😊That might be a slight over exaggeration but I’ve come a long way in two days.
But first, a little quote for you, well, I’ll give you a few throughout this post, from an inspirational man who spoke some very poignant lines. You know, one of those people whose work you read and you just think, “You are so right!” The human being in question is Walter Bonatti and if you don’t know him he was an Italian mountaineer, alpinist, explorer and writer.
He said, “The human being lives in the city, eats without hunger and drinks without thirst, gets tired without the body struggling, chasing its own time without ever reaching it. He is an imprisoned being, a prison without borders from which it is almost impossible to escape. But some human beings sometimes need to recover their lives, to find a high road again. Not everyone tries, few succeed.”
How true is that! Now don’t misunderstand me……..I love a city and a city break, and I like my job most of the time (possibly not on a Monday morning)……..but this quote explains exactly why I need to escape into nature and particularly mountains on a very frequent basis. I’m trying to escape from everything that binds me, work, home…., find a high road, recover myself and my life, and feel free again.
However, the slight problem being, I’m ‘all the gear and no idea’ I wander around like ‘dizzy daydream’ because I’m a bit of a daydreamer, head in the clouds, living in my own dream world. I get lost in IKEA, never mind on a mountain. I am constrained by my lack of navigational ability and my absolute fear of being lost in low lying cloud, so I am a bit limited as to where I can go and at what time of year if I’m walking alone, as I am not safe. I’m not allowed to enter any fell running races that require compulsory navigational experience and I have all sorts of little plans about some more remote long distance mountainous walking next summer so I thought it was about time I face this fear and sort myself out and get practicing.
So, I’ve been away for a whole weekend, on my own, to the mountainous Lake District on an accredited navigational course! No longer is my shiny Silva compass a pretty accessory with which to adorn my new orange rucksack. No longer is my fold out waterproof map of the Lake District an accessory on which to sit on on wet grass to eat my picnic. I know what to do with both!!! And I am so proud of myself as this was not easy and I’m not going to lie and tell you it was the best weekend ever as believe me it had it lows which I shall explain in a moment.
I applied for the course and was completely truthful in describing my previous experience i.e. I have no idea what any parts of the compass are or which way to hold it, and my Ordinance Survey map reading experience is limited to knowing a few of the symbols, those being the cross for a church, blue telephone box for a telephone and blue tankard for the pub……….well what else do you need!?!😂 I did an Ordinance Survey online quiz and scored an abysmal 5 out of 20.
The course looked perfect. In the beautiful Elterwater valley at the Youth Hostel, aimed navigators of all levels, with lots of time practicing on the mountains and fells, and more importantly at 21:30pm each evening it actually said on the course itinerary, ‘Pub’. “This is the course for me”, I thought!
I drove there straight from work on Friday to arrive for the evening start. There were 29 of us, but lots of instructors. So as promised on the application form I was placed into my very small group, with fellow beginners Martha and Jack, and our lovely instructor Kevin. Now Kevin had the patience of a saint, and boy did he need it! Kevin spent an hour and a half explaining the basics of the compass and the map. I think he had got the measure of me by the time we convened at the pub and I was wondering why my red needle did not change direction when I turned my compass. He explained very patiently that the red needle is the needle that points north and no matter how many time I twizzled myself the map and the compass around that needle was always going to point the same way……..north! Funnily enough, I had no problem whatsoever finding the pub.
Anyway, everyone was really lovely including my fellow dormitory room mates Hannah, Anna, Kirsty, Kim and Christine. Together we made a room of six and we all had a lot in common, including running, and we got on great. There was a even split of men and women on the course and funnily enough a number of the women were all women of a certain age, kids getting older and suddenly realising we have a life to live and a world to explore, if only we could read a map and use a compass!
All fully acquainted with one another we made an early start on Saturday, a beautiful sunny day, with a pre-breakfast run at 7am. After breakfast we split off into our small groups, picked up our hostel packed lunch and headed off into the mountains with our instructor.
We learnt all sorts: how to set the map; how to pace our steps and use Naismith’s rule to work out how long it would take us to cover a certain distance on the map; how to take a compass bearing; how to identify features on a map; how to use certain features as attack points to safely lead us to the place we are heading for; how to plan a route in small steps in poor visibility; how to look at the contours of a map and visualise the lay of the land in 3 dimensions.
By the afternoon Kevin was setting us little individual challenges by pointing to a knoll on the map or a feature and asking us to individually lead the group to it. I loved it and I was feeling very smug with how much I had understood and could put into practice in such a short space of time.
My enthusiasm was only slightly dampened when at 3pm Kevin announced we make our way to the start point for the ‘solo’ navigation exercise! Aaaarrrrghhh………..I didn’t know there was going to be a test! Thank goodness I brought the bright orange rucksack, I knew the colour choice would come in handy in a search and rescue operation! So we set off at timed intervals. We were handed a map with ten checkpoints marked on it. The checkpoints were things like a sheepfold, knoll or sometimes just a boulder in a very precise location, the bearings and navigation had to be spot on to find them and then we had to find our own way back to the hostel. I finished the course, finding all 10 checkpoints, so had a lovely wander back, even finding time to snap some pictures of the lovely views and a selfie with my new favourite toy/rucksack accessory……….my compass!
Dinner finished, I was just thinking about having a post curry and apple crumble snooze when it was announced that we needed to get all togged up again in out gear for a night navigation excercise…….in the dark! The only saving grace was that we were in pairs. So off I trotted with the lovely Martha into the very, very dark fells to hunt for another 5 checkpoints. This was hard and the bearings and map reading had to be spot on as there is no light pollution out there at all so you could only see as far as your headtorch shone. My second pair of trainers that day had their baptism of bog water and sheep shit as you just could not see where you were walking. We all managed just one drink in the pub and then we were off to bed…….we were exhausted…..12 full hours on the fells.
Now Sunday was when it all fell apart, well it did for me! Sunday was the very big 10km solo navigation exercise. There were 10 check points to find in some really obscure locations and you were set off alone with a good gap between you and the next person and the route went quite a good few miles out over the remote Silver How fell at 395m. The very slight problem for me was that the weather had turned and was bad. It was raining quite heavily and the cloud base was down below 300m. So that meant visibility up there was very poor with some heavy rain and windy gusts. I’m not afraid to say I was absolutely terrified as I do have a huge fear of being lost in cloud.
Why am I telling you this. Well for a start, people think I’m brave and I want to tell you that absolutely everyone has something that they are scared of. If they say they haven’t then they are lying. I’m absolutely not brave when it comes to the things I am scared of! I’m just as scared witless as everyone else. This is where the great Walter Bonatti comes in again. His quote kept going round and round in my head as I fell apart and completely unravelled sat on a rock. In this case he’s talking about climbing, but it can just as easily be applied to walking in the mountains in poor visibility: “Climbing is not a battle with the elements, nor against the law of gravity. It’s a battle against oneself. The mountains taught me not to cheat, to be honest with myself and with what I was doing. It is to conquer fear that one becomes a climber. The climber experiences life to its extreme. A climber is not crazy. He is not out to get himself killed. He knows what life is worth. He is in love with living.“
Off I set into the fog and was feeling ok when I reached checkpoint one. It had gone quite smoothly, my bearings were accurate and I didn’t spend too much time rustling in the undergrowth when I found it. Checkpoint 2 was quite a way away so I decided on a two step approach with visibility being poor. I spotted a large marshy area on the map 300 meters away and thought I would head for that and when I hit it take another bearing to the checkpoint which should be on the south west side of a prominent knoll. I took the bearing and set off confidently and then the path just disappeared. From that point on my confidence just slowly eroded. Sure of my bearing I seemed to be wading through bracken up a very steep ascent for ages. I reached the ridgeline and was confident it was left as that’s what my bearing said. I came across Jack who shot off to the right as he thought it was that way. I stuck to my decision and went left to stumble across the marsh and took another bearing to the knoll. I eventually got to the knoll and found the flag hidden in the undergrowth but by that time I had completely unravelled. I was shaking like a leaf and I was so scared because I just felt so lost as visibility was so poor. I knew where I was on the map because I was by the checkpoint but I had just frozen, and to go out further onto the fell into the mist was just terrifying. Before we had set off the instructors had told us to make sure we had our whistles and had gone through the six short blast at one minute interval lecture for summoning help, which in itself scared me to death.
I took a bearing to checkpoint 3 and set off but the visibility just got poorer and poorer and I froze. So what did I do………well just to prove I’m human and not at all brave I’ll be completely honest with you and tell you I panicked, could not breathe properly, froze, sat down on a rock and just cried in the mist. So in addition the rain pouring down my face there were also tears and snot. I thought why on earth am I doing this on a Sunday morning when I could be curled up at home with a good book and a bar of Cadbury Fruit and Nut chocolate. I kept thinking of Walter and his quotes and that was when it all made sense. It was not a battle with the elements at all it was a battle with myself and my fear. I’m in love with living and I need to conquer that fear to be free to experience what I want to experience. I was so angry with myself. I took some deep breaths had a good cry, told myself that sitting on a rock crying was going to get me nowhere, and kept going over the quote. I was not lost, I knew exactly where I was, the fear was rational but I had the skills to find my way off the mountain safely even if I did not find the check points. I knew the village was south and I now knew which way was south by using my compass. I took a little video and a photo to prove to myself I’d been up there and it’s made me laugh already when I’ve looked at it again. Even though I’m trying to smile for the camera the colour has all drained from my face, I look dreadful, and you can hear me hyperventilating and trying to get my breathing under control.
So what did I do, I gave myself a good telling off, pulled my big girl pants up and pressed on. However, I’m not going to lie and tell you I found all 10 checkpoints. I didn’t! There were all different levels of expertise on the course from experienced and wanting to get better to the likes of myself who arrived not knowing which way up to hold my compass. I decided that I could not make it around with 100% certainty that I would not need help. From such a low starting point it was just too much too soon. I found 5 checkpoints and then safely navigated myself back to the hostel.
I’m going to be honest and tell you that I have really beaten myself up so much about not being brave enough to go and find all ten. However I was praised for making the decision to return when I did. Apparently, according to some, making the decision to quit at the right time is braver than pressing on when it might not be the right thing for you to do, even though I’m still finding it hard to accept.
Despite Sunday not going quite as well as planned I am so glad I went. I’m taking the positives from it. Bravery was being there on the course on my own in the first place. I heave learnt so much in such a short space of time and it has opened up so many new possibilities for me in terms of exploring. I’m going to be spending lots of time over the coming winter weekends drawing random crosses on maps and then seeing if I can find the locations as it’s one of those things that you need to practice over and over again to build confidence so that I am comfortable enough to wander off in poor visibility and know that my new found skills can lead me to safety. So watch this space for more adventures of the orange rucksack, the compass, and me!!!
Anyway one final Bonatti quote for you: ‘The reality is five percent of life. Man must dream to save himself.‘ So I’m going to be just fine, I’ve always been 95% dreamer!
So, what’s the message? The message is: never stop exploring, face those fears and more important than all, never stop dreaming!