By: Blonde Two
Forests are not my favourite navigation thing.
Although all of the usual navigation rules apply (trust your compass, check your distance etc) forests have a habit of messing around with your (my) sense of direction.
Which is probably why I have never walked into the middle of Fernworthy Forest. I have walked all around it (a couple of times) and across it on the main footpath; but I haven’t followed the forestry tracks or paths in any direction other than ‘straight through’.
The good things about forests for navigation are:
- They usually have an edge.
- They usually have paths (see ‘bad things’ below.)
- You usually know when you are in one.
The bad things about forests for navigation are:
- It is tricky to walk on a direct bearing without banging into a tree.
- You can’t see a point on the horizon.
- They usually have paths.
You might think (and usually you would be right) that paths are more good than bad; but somehow, in a forest, the paths never quite seem to go where your map says that they are going to. Not only that, but in a forest because paths are easier to follow than trees, it is easy to keep walking down a path that isn’t actually going in the right direction.
Despite not having visited the interior of Fernworthy Forest, I do know a few things about it:
- If you camp at the edge of it, every single midge that lives there will come out and bite you (plus some of their cousins from nearby Soussons Down).
- It has some interesting Bronze Age artefacts and some much newer ruins (if you can find them).
- It wasn’t always a plantation (obvious I know but photos of that part of the moor without the forest look very odd to me.)
You can read more in this Moor than Meets the Eye project report. Give it a go, it is very interesting.
Ha ha Fernworthy Forest! Yeah, I ventured into the middle without a compass. Big mistake! Walked for miles in circles and to many dead ends. Even found the rave site!!!! In the end my geocaching app saved the day!!! Fortunately I didn’t get lost the next time I visited and actually made it to Sittaford and Grey Wethers! Unlike my previous visit x
Forestry workers mess about with forests and suddenly all your familiar paths have changed and make you look like an idiot as you try to find your bearings again!
You’ve said it all. Long has it been a maxim of mine never to take shortcut through a forest.
It’s quite fun to follow a forest
path taking GPS bearings all the way, then see how far the real path is from the map path, but please never let me loose in a wood, let alone a forest, without at least a compass – – –
You would no doubt pooh-pooh walking in Surrey as merely lurching from one £2.2m mansion to the next. And as for Box Hill – too touristy by half, my dear. Yet Box Hill is wooded and throws up the same problems animadverted in your post.
The RR family (then living in Surrey) had uncharacteristically gone for a designated walk, had shuffled round the fringe of suburbs, had ascended Box Hill and was now comparatively tired. Yet so many millions of people had reached Box Hill’s summit over the centuries that the path we were following dissolved into a huge area at the top that was all worn, all path, if you like. I lacked a compass (We were in Surrey, for goodness’s sake!) and somewhere, in some direction a couple of miles away lay the car-park we had started off from. For a little while I experienced frustration that became tinged with panic – you know, the “whitened-bones” sort of panic. Or perhaps you don’t.
Rather a forest (as in man-made plantation) than a natural wood, methinks. The plantation, being planted by man for harvest, actually has the useful feature of being laid out in straight lines. OK, the lines may be in different orientations but they will at least be straight and thus take you in a specific direction – potentially useful for short-cut way-planning. Not only that but to make room for trees to grow, individual rows are removed leaving a distinct walkway. That’s to say nothing of the “rides” wide enough for foresters vehicles, or the more meandering but useful gravelled roads around the plantation. I have OS maps with tree-line directions marked on it by hand for forests I visit regularly and such detail can be used for easy short-cuts without need of a compass. Why not try it when at Fernworthy next – it’ll be another aid to navigation should you need it.
This experience is considerably different to one I had in Ashford Forest, Kent. Natural haphazard growth has trees in random order, and different types of vegetation in various stages of development. That makes for harder and much less distinctive going and more difficult orientation. Land features like a lake or stream help but triangulation isn’t easy. Quite often it is the angle of terrain that must be followed to a recognisable feature. A map certainly states what there is around to find and a compass helps with direction – although things like a tree canopy tending to grow more heavily towards the sun in the South (in the Northern hemisphere) is a useful indicator.