NNAS Bronze Course

I started running the NNAS Bronze syllabus several years ago. It seems to be growing in popularity and, on occasion, I’ve had people travel several hundred miles to access the course. This time was a bit different. Having set up the dates for a couple of more local people, I found myself just working with one, that hadn’t even been in the original group.

However, we met up down near Church Stretton and chatted over his expectations. Obviously, with only the one participant, it gave me a bit more flexibility to arrange the two days around his needs as well as the demands of the syllabus. We spent some time looking over different maps and their pros and cons before heading off foe an explore of the local area. It was interesting to note that, being relatively local, he had some previous experience of the area which turned out to be a slight hinderance, leading him into a false sense of familiarity and security.

I was actually quite impressed with some of the things he was recognising from the map, but there were difficulties in orientating it and transferring it into the real world. On several occasions, we walked straight past fairly significant things that we were looking for due to a lack of concentration. So, on the back of yesterday’s experience, we decided to spend today in a completely new environment, continuing to work on following linear features.

We gathered at the base of Rodney’s Pillar, and spent the day doing lots of short navigational legs. Some of these were done with precision, while others resulted in uncertainty and confusion. During our lunch break, he shared with me that he had always had difficulties with attention to detail and spacial awareness, so we talked through possible strategies for working around these shortcomings.

It was disappointing not to be able to ‘pass’ him for his NNAS Bronze award today, but I hope that he can combine the coping strategies with the raw skills we covered through getting out there and practicing over the next few months.

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