How to Navigate Using a Compass and Paper Map

Why a Paper Map Still Earns Its Place

There is nothing wrong with a phone for navigation — until the moment it matters. In the deep valleys of the Lake District, the Cambrian Mountains or the Scottish glens, signal disappears with little warning. Cold weather flattens batteries, a cracked screen becomes useless in rain, and a device that was fully charged at the car park can be dead by the time the cloud comes down. A laminated map and a baseplate compass weigh almost nothing and never need charging.

That is not a argument against technology. It is an argument for having a second, independent way of knowing where you are. The skills below take an afternoon to learn and a lifetime to sharpen.

Getting to Know Your Compass

A standard baseplate compass has a handful of features worth naming before you use it in anger. Familiarise yourself with them at the kitchen table rather than on a foggy ridge.

• The baseplate, with a ruler edge and often a romer scale for measuring grid references.
• The direction of travel arrow, running along the baseplate and pointing where you want to go.
• The rotating bezel, marked in degrees, with an index line at the top.
• The magnetic needle, with the red end pointing to magnetic north.
• The orienting arrow and lines inside the bezel — the "dog house" the needle sits in.

Keep the compass flat and away from anything magnetic. A phone, a bunch of keys, a metal gate or a wire fence can drag the needle several degrees off. Half a metre of clearance is usually enough.

Setting the Map: The Habit That Saves the Most Time

Setting, or orienting, the map means turning it until it matches the ground around you. Lay the compass flat on the map and align the edge of the baseplate with a north–south grid line. Now rotate the bezel until its orienting lines run parallel with those grid lines and the orienting arrow points to the top of the map. Holding map and compass together, turn your whole body until the red end of the needle sits inside the orienting arrow.

The map is now aligned with the landscape. Features on the paper line up with features on the ground, and suddenly a jumble of contours makes sense. Do this every time you stop to check your position — it takes ten seconds and prevents the most common error in British hillwalking, which is confidently walking a route in the wrong direction because the map was upside down.

One note on magnetic variation: it changes slowly across Britain and is currently small enough that most walkers ignore it. Maps print the current figure in the margin, so glance at it if you are navigating precisely or travelling a long distance on a single bearing.

Taking and Walking a Bearing

A bearing is simply the direction to something, expressed in degrees. To take one, point the direction of travel arrow at the feature you want — a cairn, a col, a trig point — then rotate the bezel until the orienting lines sit parallel with the grid lines and the orienting arrow points north. Read the number at the index line. That is your bearing.

To walk it, hold the compass flat at waist height with the direction of travel arrow pointing away from you. Turn your body until the red needle sits in the dog house. Look up, pick out a distinct feature on that line — a boulder, a lone tree, a bend in a stream — and walk to it. Then check the bearing again. Walking with your head down on the compass is slow and you will miss the view, the ground underfoot and the group behind you.

To check you have not drifted, take a back bearing to the feature you left. It should be the original bearing plus or minus 180 degrees. If it is not, you have wandered, and the size of the error tells you how far.

Handrails, Catching Features and Pacing

Good navigators rarely walk on bearings alone. They use the landscape to do some of the work.

• A handrail is a linear feature you can follow — a wall, a fence, a stream, a ridge line. Walk beside it and you only need to check direction occasionally.
• A catching feature is something obvious beyond your target on the same line, such as a lochan or a road. If you overshoot, you will meet it and know you have gone too far.
• Aiming off means deliberately heading slightly left or right of your target so you meet a handrail and know which way to turn. It is far better than walking straight at a point and missing it by fifty metres in mist.
• Pacing lets you measure distance. Count double paces over a measured 100 metres on similar ground, and you will find most adults take roughly 60 to 70. Use it in thick fog when there is nothing to see.

Add timing to that: on rough hill ground, allow about three kilometres per hour, plus a minute for every ten metres of ascent. It is a rough guide, but it stops you guessing how far the summit still is.

Practise on Ground You Already Know

The best place to build these skills is a familiar local path — a woodland trail, a moorland edge, a stretch of coast path. Put the phone in your pocket, set the map, take a bearing to a gate a kilometre away and walk to it without looking at the screen. Then do it in drizzle, then at dusk.

Do that half a dozen times and the routine becomes automatic: set the map, take a bearing, pick a feature, pace the distance, check the back bearing. When the cloud drops and the signal bars vanish, you will already know exactly what to do.