The Landscapes Walking Companion

PREFACE

This book has been devised as the perfect walking companion. Primarily published as a handbook to accompany Sunflower’s Landscapes series of walking guides, the information and advice it contains is as useful to users of other publishers’ guides as it is to those using Sunflower’s guides. Just as you might welcome a raconteur on your walks with tales of the 'old days' in the countryside, or a naturalist to identify animal tracks or flowers or trees, or a geologist to explain the rock formations, or an astronomer to name the stars, or a farmer to teach you ancient agricultural skills, so we hope you will carry this book with you on your walks.

This companion is also expert in outdoor skills. If you have a problem with finding your way, making sure your drinking water is clean, or devising an emergency shelter, valuable advice is at hand. Is it going to rain? Your companion will help you make your own forecasts.

Is it safe to pick that mushroom and eat it? Your companion will help you decide. How can I be sure it is safe to drink the water in this stream? Your companion will tell you what you need to do. How can I get a decent close-up photograph of this beautiful butterfly? Your companion will give you useful advice.

When your holiday is done and your walking is over, your companion will have given you a richer experience to look back on. And if you have taken your companion's advice on photography, you will have more memorable photographs to act as reminders of your walk.

This version contains most of the text that appeared in the previous edition of the book with some minor amendments to take account of new products and technology. But in all other respects, the advice and information given by Paul and Christine is as relevant today as it was in 1998 when this book was first published.

The book can be viewed on the Kindle, the iPhone, the iPad, the Sony and other tablet readers, laptops and netbooks, plus desktop computers and many smartphones. In some instances you can select your preferred type face and type size for a reading format that suits your personal choice.

ROUTE-FINDING

Some people always seem to know where they are and in which direction they're going. How do they do it?

In fact, scientists have never found any direction-finding mechanism in human beings. No sixth sense. No internal magnets. Nothing. It is all simply a question of a positive mental attitude and a few easily mastered techniques.

GETTING TO GRIPS WITH MAPS

The whole trick is to get a simple map established in your head, before you go. In fact, every member of the party should always do this — if nothing else, it adds to the pleasure of anticipation.

If you are going to buy a map, choose one with a large scale. A 1:25,000 map is ideal for hiking — that scale is two and a half inches to the mile, half an inch representing 350 yards (or if you are using metric, 1 centimetre on the map represents 250 metres on the ground). A scale of 1:50,000 will just about do. Any scale smaller than that (1:100,000 etc.), while adequate for a road atlas, will not show enough detail for a hiker.

Study the map well in advance of setting off. If you have difficulty with maps, study it several times over a period of days. To do this, place the map on a table with north at the top. You will then have east to the right, south at the bottom and west to the left. This is vitally important, because you have to keep the information in your head in a structured way, and north at the top is the convention.

Locate the place you intend to start your walk and the place that you are walking to. Got them? Okay, which direction approximately will you be walking? Is it northish, eastish, southish or westish? Let us suppose that it is towards the east. Straight away you have a simple check. The sun rises in the east. Therefore, in the northern hemisphere, you will have the sun in front of you in the morning, shining on your right side during the middle of the day, and behind you in the evening. Or suppose you are walking south. You will have the sun on your left side in the morning, in front of you during the middle of the day, and to your right in the evening. Easy, isn't it? No doubt the path is going to wiggle around a bit — we're concerned with the general direction.

As you walk, stop from time to time to look behind you and take note of the features that will help you retrace your steps. That way, even if you plan to follow a circular or one-way itinerary, you should be able to get back to your starting point if something goes wrong.

A note for American readers. If you are walking in Europe and buy one of the maps we recommend, you will invariably find they use metric measurements rather than miles and yards. You will see that throughout this book we refer to distances in metres (m) or kilometres (km). A metre is just over 39 inches so a little over a yard. If we give a distance as 200 m just reckon on it being roughly 10% more in yards (nearly 220 yards in this example). As for kilometres, one kilometre is equal to just over five eighths of a mile (for example 24 km is equal to about 15 miles). Be aware, too, that as Sunflower Books is based in London we have used UK spelling of words throughout.

Now let's look at the map in more detail. If it seems confusing, that's not surprising, because there's more information on a good map than in the average encyclopedia. It's impossible to absorb all of that information in one go, or even in several sessions. You have to start by noting the most important facts. You want landmarks that are going to help orientate you on your walk. These will vary with the kind of terrain. They could be mountains, rivers, villages, churches, orchards, vineyards, and so on. Study the map key — you will not be able to memorise it all in one go, but each time you refer to the map try to add at least one more symbol to your knowledge.

But now be very careful. For it is here that many mistakes are made. Some people tend to navigate solely on the basis of one or two features that they think they recognise. Unfortunately, churches all tend to be similar, as do streams and mountains. Make sure that when you think you recognise a feature, its position is consistent with all the other information that you know. In other words, if a hermitage is the goal of your walk, do not assume that the first church tower you see must necessarily be what you are seeking. Ask yourself: 'Is this in the right position relative to all the other features that I know about?'

As you walk you won't want to be holding the map in front of you the whole time. Get into the habit of continuously updating the map in your head. Close your eyes for a minute. You should be able to envisage a simple grid, just like the grid on the map, and you should be able to place a few features on that grid as well as your own position. As you walk, so your place relative to these other fixed features should be updated on the map in your mind. Even if you are not the leader of the party, you should still be doing this.

If something does not 'add up', then the probability is that you have made a mistake. But do not rule out the possibility that the map is wrong. It does happen. We know maps that show roads where none exist, or which show dirt tracks as metalled roads. Once we arrived at a village and found that the name written on the road sign was not the one we expected. We assumed we had gone wrong... until we found out that the name on the map was incorrect.

Don't be too proud to seek help! Even experts can sometimes confuse features. If, for example, you're not sure which mountain summit is which and local people are nearby, ask them to point out the summits and their names.

Contour lines

Contour lines are a nightmare to many people. If you are among them, then persevere. It is difficult at first to form a mental picture on the basis of contour lines, but it does come with practice.

All points of a particular land feature that have the same altitude will be linked by the same contour line. If you have difficulty envisaging this, imagine that you have been asked to build a canal at a particular altitude around a mountain. Obviously, the canal must be level. The pattern of this canal would equate to the pattern of the contour line on the map for that altitude.

How frequently contour lines are drawn in depends on the mapmaker. Usually they are at 20 metre intervals, with an extra- thick line every 100 metres. The contour intervals will be marked on the key. In addition, heights will be shown on the maps themselves in two ways: some of the thick brown contour lines will show heights, and isolated 'spot heights' will be indicated. (This is how heights are indicated on Landscapes maps.)

Still confused? Let's start with something simple. Take a pudding bowl and place it upside down on the table. Imagine that the table is the sea and that the bowl is a thousand metre-high mountain rising out of the sea. The rim of the upside down bowl will therefore be at zero altitude. That rim would be represented by a circle on the map. If a contour line were to be drawn at 500 metres (half way up the bowl), that would also be a circle, and because the bowl gets smaller as it goes up, so that contour line would be represented as a circle inside the first. And so on. If such a regular-shaped mountain ever existed, it would be shown on the map by a series of smaller and smaller circles, drawn one inside the other. The following diagram should help.

There's just one problem still to be sorted out. A right way up bowl — that is to say, a hole — would be represented on the map in exactly the same way as the wrong way up bowl, as a series of concentric circles. How do you know, then, if you're looking at something that sticks up or goes down? The answer is to run your eye along the thicker contour lines until you find a place where the altitudes are marked. If the inner circle has an altitude of 1000 m and the outermost circle an altitude of500 m, then it's a mountain. If the gradient is the other way round, then it must be a depression of some sort — common on the volcanic cones in the Azores (see above).

Not every minute feature can be shown by contour lines. It would be too complicated. If contour lines are, say, 20 metres apart and there is a small cliff with a vertical drop of 10 metres, this will not be revealed by the contour lines. Watch out!

Often you won't need to find the actual altitudes to be able to tell at a glance, because the map will be littered with other clues. For example, am I looking at a ridge or a valley bottom ? If there's a stream marked, it has to be a valley bottom, because streams don't run along ridges. Some maps are better than others at conveying information at a glance. Some, for example, use shading to denote opposite sides of valleys and ridges. Or mark altitudes frequently.

Once you have the hang of it you will be able to 'see' a simple three-dimensional model of the map in your head. Now look at your own map again. What general shapes can you pick out? The more you use a map, the more you'll get the 'hang' of it.

What is the route like?

Don't worry too much about recreating three dimensions from contour lines. Most of the time a general impression will be good enough. For example, you want to know if