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posted by mrpg on Sunday May 13 2018, @01:22AM   Printer-friendly
from the like-a-homing-pigeon dept.

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow3941

Nature is full of clues to help you find your way – if you know where to look. Stuart Heritage lets go of the GPS to learn the art of natural navigation from pioneer Tristan Gooley

[...] How to navigate in a city

Look for satellite dishes. They all point towards the equator. In London, that is roughly south-southeast.

Find an 'invisible handrail' and use it to remember your bearings. In the countryside, this might be a river. In a city, it could be a main road.

Look at a tree. Do the branches point a certain way? That's probably south. Are the leaves on those branches smaller than the leaves on the opposite side? That's definitely south.

Use the sun. It rises in the east, sets in the west and moves through the southern sky, giving you a very basic compass.

Need to get home? Head against the flow of people at the start of the day or with the flow at the end and you are pretty much guaranteed to find a station.

Source: Ditching the satnav: the lost secrets of natural navigation


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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 13 2018, @05:06AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 13 2018, @05:06AM (#679081)

    Not strictly true, the equator is anywhere between east and west (exclusively, north- or southwards depending on hemisphere). Sure, shortest distance is exactly south, but that wasn't said.
    Also it's a grammar mess-up. Satellite dishes point approximately towards the equator, south south-east to be specific (and that will change depending on how far north or south you are).
    Of course it doesn't answer what satellite dishes have to do with NATURAL navigation, unless nature started growing them nowadays...

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