I love the Peak District—it’s definitely one of my favorite places in England. For my birthday present this year, Adam booked us onto an outdoors course in the Peaks! This was of course a great gift (well done, Mr. AWM!), but also a really fun experience. Our course was with Pure Outdoor, who run all sorts of different outdoor courses. They do quite a few climbing ones, as well as navigation courses, and winter mountaineering courses amongst others. This is all about the beginner navigation course with Pure Outdoor, and what this was actually like!

Booking The Navigation Course And Introduction

The Sunday that we were booked for our course with Pure Outdoor was actually a bit of a different event. This course was sponsored by Alpkit, who (if I understand it correctly) subsidize a few courses with Pure Outdoor throughout the year. We got ours for a real bargain thanks to this—it was about £40 per person. (Normally, the Pure Outdoors course is about £80 per person.)

Our group met at the Alpkit store in Hathersage, where we were introduced to Gavin, who was our guide for the day. There were six of us in the group—it was a really nice group size! Everyone else was really friendly and it was nice chatting to different people. We came from all over: Adam and I from York, another couple from near Manchester, a guy from near Nottingham, and another woman from Manchester. Most of us had come on the course because we enjoyed the outdoors. But we wanted more confidence in hiking routes and (to put it simply) knowing where we were going.

The navigation course started out with some pretty basic (yet very important!) skills—learning how to read OS maps. I’ve been using OS maps for all of my hiking in the UK for years. But there were so many new things I learned! I knew the things I needed to use on the map key, but I learned a lot of new symbols and it was really informative. It gave us a great foundation for what we were about to learn.

Navigation Around Burbage Moor

We headed off in the van to near Burbage Moor. The weather was foggy and rainy, but that didn’t stop us! Gavin even joked that these were his favorite conditions for doing a navigation course, since you have to use your navigation skills even more.

Overall, I learned SO much from this course. We learned all about timings, using time to measure distance, and counted our paces. Walking and counting my paces was probably the most difficult part of the whole day! This is really useful for measuring how far you’ve walked, and how far you have to go before you reach a marker etc. We also did lots of map reading, especially about contour lines, and learned how to use a compass! I feel a bit sheepish that I bought a compass over a year ago, but never used it until this course.

My biggest takeaway from this was how you can measure distances on a map with your compass. You can then use timings (or paces) to measure how far you’ve walked. This will be huge for me in my future hikes—it’s a really straightforward way of knowing where to go and how far you’ve gone. Gavin made all of this really easy to understand. And even when either myself or someone else in the group didn’t understand something, he made sure to explain it again until we got it.

After a lunch break, our navigation took us over Higger Tor. We took the wrong path (whoops!) and walked through a saturated and wet field around a sheepfold. We also learned about taking bearings from a compass, and how to follow bearings! While I don’t think many of my hikes will require this, it’s really useful information for if I need to plan specific routes or go in a specific direction.

After a nice walk through Longshaw Estate, we re-joined the road and piled back in the Pure Outdoor van. We had a quick stop back at the Alpkit store in Hathersage, where Gavin talked us through grid references on OS maps. Being able to read (and give) grid references is super useful in the event of emergency. So I’m glad we were able to squeeze this bit in!

The Takeaway

Overall, this was a really fantastic course. I learned so many new skills that I know will prove useful (if not imperative) on my next hiking adventures. More than that, I gained a lot of confidence. I’m a pretty confident hiker when I go out walking with Adam, because I know that there’s someone else to fall back on if I can’t figure things out. One of the main reasons I wanted to do this course was because I wanted to be able to go out hiking on my own, and be confident in doing that!

If you’re looking to build up an outdoor skillset and feel more confident in hiking, I would definitely recommend this course with Pure Outdoor. The Peak District is an amazing place to visit in the first place. Gavin was a fantastic guide, and I genuinely learned so much in just one day. I hope this gives a better idea of what the Pure Outdoor Beginner Navigation Course is like, and maybe the nudge to do one yourself!

Have you ever taken an outdoors course before? Share your experiences in the comments below!

You might like my other posts on the Peak District:

The Peak District: Hope Valley, Castleton, Mam Tor And More

An Evening Hike In The Peak District With Salomon

Eyam: The Peak District Plague Village

And all of my hiking posts!

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