Jun 242 min read

Veterinary Voices Hiking Group: Navigation Event

Updated: Jul 8

Feeling lost? We can help guide you!

At London Vet Show the Veterinary Voices Hiking Group had a community mastermind session and our co-founders Robyn Lowe and Paul Horwood heard that one of the factors in our community not exploring more is confidence in navigation.

So, 2024 was set to be the year to offer some courses aimed at upskilling the community and making them more confident while out exploring. The first event was a multi-day Trauma Awareness Course in the Lake District, training people how to deal with emergencies in remote locations and how to get help quickly.

Next up was the Navigation course in the Brecon Beacons, aiming at giving those involved more confidence in using maps and compass to explore the UK. The aim was to teach the basics of navigation, how to walk on a bearing, how to take a back bearing(s) to find your location on a map, how to provide a 6-8 figure grid reference and importantly, how to realize you are lost, and how to get back to a point of safety.

With a massive thank you to Norbrook and PetsApp who have supported the hiking group, allowing us to purchase maps and compasses so that the group had resources to learn.

Day one saw us meet for breakfast at the Markets Tavern in Brecon, for a 2 hour theory session on navigation by Paul Horwood. Starting with the basics and building up to working in pairs to document a leg of a pre-planned 14 Km hike near Fan LLia and Fan Fawr, where the teams were expected to provide a start and end point grid reference, a bearing, a description of the route based off the OS map and a time that the leg was expected to take. These are all essential skills to help build up confidence and knowledge in map reading.

After the breakfast and the theory session, the team headed out to the hills, taking it in turns to navigate their leg, but with one slight difference! Whilst out, the teams were directed instead to take routes off the footpaths so that they were well and truly working off bearings and the landscape.

Co-founders of the Veterinary Voices Hiking Group, Robyn and Paul, helped the team as they practiced walking on a bearing, navigating around obstacles such as rivers and streams, how to take back bearings to pinpoint your location and how to pace out 100m to help micro-navigate in tricky areas.

Day one finished with a lovely group meal at a pub, followed by an early night ready for day two. Day two took us over Waun lefrith, fan brycheiniog, ‘The Black Mountain’ and around the beautiful LLyn y Fan Fwar and Llyn y Fan Fach. The group again practiced some key navigation skills and even had some downtime from the walk to have a cold water dip in the Lakes!