NNAS Silver NAvigator award 27th & 28th MArch 2024

NNAS SILVER NAVIGATOR AWARD 27TH & 28TH MARCH 2024

I have delivered many NNAS Silver courses in the last 4 years - I find every one of them enjoyable but this one goes on the list of the most enjoyable courses. I always love teaching navigation and all the fun that goes with it. The weather, although challenging at times, made perfect conditions for this course and the 'Silver' learning environment.

​Feedback:

• ​I enjoyed the two days immensely and learned some really useful things
• You have a great way of presenting your subject matter, making things really logical and easy to follow
• Opportunity to learn and then practice new skills in challenging terrain
• Knowledgeable leader who explains clearly
• Practical training in realistic conditions
• Practice in the dark
• Outside learning environment
• Friendly intuitive instructor - depth without too much discipline.
• Helen's teaching skills
• Helen and Alan's personalities - both are very approachable people and enthusiastic about what they do
• All round excellent course

From the NNAS website:
'The Silver National Navigation Award develops the navigation skills acquired at the Bronze level. It adds skills required to navigate to features and places some distance from paths and tracks. It teaches accurate compass work. It will also teach you to select the suitable navigational techniques to cross open country.'

Day 1
I chose a route that I particularly like for navigation and with the weather forecast looking very changeable, it wouldn’t be enjoyable to be on lowland in all the mud and wet ground that is about at the moment. We would reach just above 600m for a very short period of time and on a very interesting route. The route allows for a revision of PROW and access to open access land and also many features to relate ground to map and map to ground. The visibility wasn’t, great, sometimes poor, adding to the learning environment.

The first session took place in the Brecon Beacons National Park tea rooms where we had informal introductions and covered appropriate parts of the syllabus for indoors. I am a great believer in learning outdoors and dynamically - wind, rain, hail can make this challenging for participants who maybe feel a little more apprehensive than others, so a balance is struck to optimise the learning experience. 
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All participants were particularly competent in different areas of the syllabus and this made a very enjoyable, full on learning day. 

We rounded up the afternoon in the tea rooms where I introduced Alan Ward who would be assisting us with the day into night navigation session that evening.

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Night Navigation
It’s didn’t rain, hail or snow - we did the whole 2hr session on a beautifully calm and quiet evening, quite a contrast from earlier. The participants all enjoyed the different experience of navigating in darkness (simulating low visibility).

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Day 2
An excellent area for putting into practice everything that has been learnt on Day 1. Participants worked confidently and accurately. Snow on the ground made the terrain slippery and added to the already challenging conditions - although we had breaks of sunshine it would be followed by low visibility. The rain developed into heavier showers as the day went on.

All the participants did exceptionally well over the duration of the course. They remained calm and collected when the going got tough. Very well done and congratulations. It was immensely enjoyable for me, thank you all for training with Bryn Walking.