Navigation For Beginners 1

Ok, before we even set foot on the hill, I reckon it's a good idea to have a really good idea in your mind of what a map and compass are. Sounds obvious, but it makes some of the later stuff make more sense, and how many people look at a map without really seeing what it is and how many people carry a compass but hardly knows what it does. Ok, firstly The Map. It's a drawing. Of the ground. Looking from directly above. Drawn to scale. In 2 dimensions (ie it's flat). But the real ground is lumpy bumpy so it has squiggly brown lines drawn on it on called contours that are used to represent hills. And it's covered with vertical and horizontal lines with numbers on called grid lines. So far so good.

The scale of the map is the figure found on the cover, something like 1:50000 (1 to 50 thousand) or 1:25000 or 1:40000. All it means is that, for example on the 1:25000 map, 1 unit on the map equals 25000 units on the ground. 'Units' because a ratio like 1:25000 doesn't have any set units - it could equally be inches, mm, miles, km. So, 1 inch measured off the map equals 25000 inches on the real ground, 1mm measured on the map equals 25000mm on the ground. Ok? Grid Lines are the light blue horizontal and vertical lines that divide the map up into a lot of squares. They are based on a system that ultimately divides the whole country up into little squares. And the distance between grid lines is 1km (or 1000m). Always. Whatever the scale. As the scale changes the size of the squares change but the distance between grid lines is still 1km (or 1000m). All map stuff is now done in metric so no 'inch to the mile' stuff. The grid lines are also numbered and these numbers allow Grid References to be taken so that any location can be identified (kind of like longitude and latitude). More of that next time. Lastly North is always at the top of the map. Always. Think about it. Map of the UK, Scotland at the top, that's North. And generally the top of the map is easy to identify because writing on the map tends to be the right way up. If a map had no writing on it, it would not be possible to tell which way was up. So, get a map out and find out what scale it is, where the grid lines are, and identify some contours.