Book review: The Beaches of Scotland

The Beaches of Scotland: A selected guide to over 150 of the most beautiful beaches on the Scottish mainland and islands. 2022 By Stacey McGowan Holloway. Vertebrate Publishing. 186 pp. Softback and ebook. £20 RRP. ISBN 9781839810787 Disclosure: Stacey, the

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Posted in Book reviews, Books, Geodiversity, Scotland

Hills of Hame has joined Harvey WorkingTogether scheme

Harvey maps and books are tools that I’ve made increasing use of since undertaking my Summer Mountain Leader training in 2012. I first encountered Harvey products when I found a second-hand copy of the Seven Hills of Edinburgh map, which

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Posted in Navigation

A bit of Free CPD: Duty to Care and Sudden Cardiac Arrest from UKCoaching

Colleagues at Aspen Outdoors had mentioned a free CPR/AED online refresher offered by UKCoaching, which I went to their site to check out. I’m due to refresh my Outdoor Emergency First Aid with BASP shortly and CPR is a key

Posted in Uncategorized

NNAS Navigator courses: Come out the weather’s yucky! Why winter is the time to train in navigation

Hills of Hame has been able to deliver NNAS Bronze and Silver National Navigation Award courses for a while as an independent provider but it took being confined to Edinburgh during the period when travel was not possible to give

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Posted in Navigation, Pentlands

New maps help find nature nearby in Edinburgh and Glasgow

Man, boy and dog looking at a map on a wooden floor

Disclosure of interests: I was sent free copies of these maps as a gift and have opted to write this review on a voluntary basis. I have no business connections with any of the companies or businesses mentioned in the

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Posted in Book reviews, Cycling and bikes, Edinburgh, Maps, Pentlands

Urban Geology meets Urban Nature Maps

Man, boy and dog looking at a map on a wooden floor

Edinburgh is a great city to be a geologist in. So much rock is exposed within the city bounds and there is a considerable variety in lithology, if not geological age. While the commanding heights of the seven hills (Arthur’s

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Posted in Book reviews, Edinburgh, Geodiversity, Geological Walks (urban), Maps, Scotland, Woodlands

Cycle Training Assistant completed through Cycling Scotland

Over the past two weekends I continued my progress in building up my cycling qualifications through Cycling Scotland. Local difficulties prevented me from getting up to do my final day on Cycle Trainer course with a fantastic group with diverse

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Posted in Cycling and bikes, Scotland

An ‘L’ of a way with grid references

Nav voucher

Despite the big changes in approaches to teaching navigation over the last decade or so, grid references will need to be introduced and used at some point to allow progression. As with a lot of the skills required for using

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Posted in Mountain Training, Navigation, Trips

The pitfalls of left and right in navigation and route description

Sedimentary rocks

We’ve all had the experience of mixing up left and right, often when trying to explain a route to a driver when we’re feeling under pressure ourselves. Confusing left and right may have been a contributing factor to the rout

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Posted in Hill Running, Mountain Training, Navigation, Orienteering

Completed British Orienteering Event Safety and Introduction to Orienteering e-learning

During the long days of lockdown, I found myself starting to do a lot of work for an organization where we were looking at Open Orienteering Maps and MapRunF as adjuncts to outdoor learning. This led to a gradual reconnection

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Posted in Edinburgh, Navigation, Orienteering
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