iPhonavigation

I was up a hill called The Wrekin in Shropshire this morning.
The front half of my right foot is in a cast after surgery but i have managed to develop a hybrid Nordic Walk technique that gets me up this 1300ft hill. As always the rewards of the view outweigh the minor pain of achieveing it.

There was a Scout group doing a navigation lesson on top. Navigate to that cloud.

There was also a group of four girls in their early twenties. I’d passed them on the way up and they had worked hard to reach the summit.
One of them had a look at the toposcope and couldn’t see anything (360 degree cloud inversion). She then gave the trig point a cursory glance and declared that she had “no idea what this is”.

I asked if she could hazard a guess.
I then asked if she would like to know.

I then spent about 3 minutes relating the original role of Triangulation Pillars to the modern role of apps like Google Maps on their ubiquitous smart phones.
You need to know where somewhere, anywhere, actually IS, before you can plot where everything else is in relation to it.
Remember the surveyor you see on the side of the road with a theodolite ? Well imagine him doing that between all of the hill tops in Britain.
Even for the telecommunications pillars and satellites that you’re phone uses the software still needs to know exactly where the pillar and satellite are to be able to work out where you are to be able to work out where the supermarket is relevant to you.
So although it looks like a useless white concrete block, it was really important, and is still used occasionally, and is protected by law.
You can go to some really geeky websites  http://www.trigpointinguk.com/trigs/                                   and tap in the unique number of the trig point and work out where it is relevant to all of the others.
And do you know why all you can see today is cloud ?
And do you know how high above sea level you are (its in the topograph).

In the most important film ever made (see previous post), Seth Godin implores us all to “go and do something and ask if you need help”. To “connect the dots (of learning) not just collect the dots”.
It’s not just the summit of a hill, it’s a phenomenal place to learn anything 

In the last 15 hours i have been treated to burnt red sunsets, moody grey skies, somebody doing a sunset yoga work out on the summit, and now a breathtaking inversion.