Navigate without a compass

Knowing north without instruments is a genuine skill and it is surrounded by more folklore than any other topic in this app. Two methods are good, two are rough, and most of the famous ones are worthless.

It is also worth saying at the start that direction alone rarely solves the problem. Knowing which way is north does not tell you where you are. What usually gets people home is reading the land and walking downhill to water and then to habitation, and this page ends there for that reason.

Polaris, which is the good one

Polaris sits within about one degree of true north. It does not rise or set, it does not move through the night, and it is the single most reliable direction indicator available without instruments.

Finding it from the Plough, which most people can recognise:

1. Find the Plough, the seven bright stars shaped like a saucepan. It is visible all year from Britain.
2. Take the two stars that form the outer edge of the pan, furthest from the handle. These are the pointers.
3. Follow the line they make, upwards out of the pan, about five times the distance between them.
4. The moderately bright star you land on is Polaris.

Polaris is not especially bright. People expect a brilliant star and look past it. It is the brightest thing in a fairly empty patch of sky.

If the Plough is hidden, use Cassiopeia, the lopsided W of five stars. It sits on the opposite side of Polaris at roughly the same distance, so the two rotate around the pole through the night and at least one is usually visible.

Its height above the horizon is your latitude, which in Britain means it sits high, around 50 to 58 degrees up. Worth knowing so you look in the right part of the sky.

The shadow stick

The best daytime method, and it needs only a stick and twenty minutes.

1. Push a straight stick upright into level ground in an open sunny spot.
2. Mark the tip of its shadow with a stone or a scratch.
3. Wait at least 20 minutes. Longer is more accurate.
4. Mark the new position of the shadow tip.
5. The line between the two marks runs roughly west to east, with the first mark at the west end.
6. Stand with the first mark to your left and the second to your right. You are now facing approximately north.

Why it works: the sun moves west, so the shadow moves east.

It is approximate, and least accurate around midsummer and midwinter. Twenty minutes gives a usable line and an hour gives a better one.

The sun through the day

Useful as a running check rather than a precise instrument.

The rough rule at British latitudes: the sun is roughly south at solar noon, roughly east in the morning and roughly west in the afternoon.

Two things people get wrong:

• Solar noon is not one o'clock on your phone. In British Summer Time, clock noon is an hour before solar noon, so the sun is due south nearer 1pm. There is a further correction of up to a quarter of an hour depending on the date and your longitude.
• The sun rises due east and sets due west only near the equinoxes. In midsummer in Britain it rises well north of east and sets well north of west, by a considerable margin. In midwinter it rises well south of east and sets well south of west. Assuming east at sunrise in June will put you badly wrong.

Use it for a sanity check on the direction you think you are heading, not as a bearing.

The watch method and why it is weak here

The familiar trick: point the hour hand at the sun, and south lies halfway between the hour hand and twelve.

In British Summer Time, bisect between the hour hand and one o'clock instead, because the clock is an hour ahead of the sun.

It is poor at our latitude. The method assumes the sun moves at a steady 15 degrees an hour around the horizon, which is close to true near the equator and increasingly wrong the further north you go. In Britain it can be out by a considerable margin, worst around midday in summer.

Treat it as a rough indication only, and prefer the shadow stick, which needs no assumptions and no watch.

The moon

Less reliable than the sun and worth knowing for a rough check.

• A crescent moon: a line drawn through the two horns of the crescent, extended down to the horizon, points roughly south.
• A full moon is roughly opposite the sun, so it is roughly south at midnight.
• A moon rising before sunset is lit on its west side; a moon rising after midnight is lit on its east side.

All of these are rough. If the stars are visible, use Polaris.

What does not work

The moss rule is the one to unlearn deliberately, because it is confidently taught, it feels like real woodcraft, and it will point in every direction within a hundred metres of a wood. People have followed it a long way in the wrong direction.

The dish rule is genuinely useful in a British suburb, and worth remembering because it works when you are in exactly the environment where the sky is obscured.

Using the land instead

This is the part that actually gets people home, and it needs no direction at all.

• Water runs downhill, and downhill leads to people. Follow a stream to a bigger stream, to a river, and you will meet a road, a bridge, a track or a settlement. In Britain you will rarely walk far before meeting one.
• Follow a wall, a fence or a hedge line. They were built by people and they lead somewhere.
• Get high enough to see. Fifteen minutes of ascent may show you a road, a mast, a village or the sea, and is often worth more than an hour of walking.
• Listen. Traffic, church bells, dogs, machinery. Sound carries a long way at night and in still air.
• Look at night for light domes on the cloud base. A town lights the sky above it from many miles away, and this is one of the most reliable direction finders there is.
• In Britain you are never far from a road. That is genuinely reassuring and it should shape your decision: a slow, safe, downhill walk to a track beats a bold direct line over unknown ground.

Keeping a straight line

Without a compass, drift is worse, not better.

• Line up two objects ahead on the direction you want, walk to the first, then pick a new far object beyond the second. Keeping two in line is far more accurate than aiming at one.
• Look back regularly and check your track is straight behind you.
• In snow or sand, your own footprints tell you whether you have been curving.
• Everybody drifts to one side, consistently. See taking a bearing.