Under the direction of our Training Officer Alistair Greenough, this morning six team members and call out member Gill Leigh’s daughter, Megan, (who is preparing for her Bronze Duke of Edinburgh’s Award expedition) met on Smithills moor to sharpen up their navigation skills.

The aim of the session was to concentrate on navigating using only contour interpretation, avoiding as many man made tracks, boundaries etc.

Much time was spent discussing taking your 3 dimensional surroundings and marrying it up with the map in our minds eye.  (Alistair Greenough had spent a day with Rob and Huw from www.Expeditionguide.com  in Snowdonia on Friday 10th April, doing the same thing as part of an advanced navigation day through the Mountain Training Association, thoroughly recommended)

In use, specifically for this exercise were  1:50,000 Ordnance Survey maps but printed to 1:25,000 scale which removed much of the man made additions to the map meaning the contours were much clearer.

Our Training Officer Alistair Greenough subsequently commented; “I think everyone took something away from the session and good luck to Megan with her Dof E, that’s how it all started for me.”