Walking on Dartmoor. Earle John
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Название: Walking on Dartmoor
Автор: Earle John
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Книги о Путешествиях
isbn: 9781849655118
isbn:
Equipment
You will need a small day rucksack to carry your food, spare clothing and all the other little bits and pieces I shall be suggesting. If you are thinking of camping you will have to consider a 65 to 70 litre capacity sack, but for a day walk up to 40 litres will be sufficient. A sack is useless if it does not keep the contents dry and it is usually a wise thing to put all your clothes into a polythene bag inside the rucksack.
A word should be written about some of the other small items that I feel might be taken with you for safety and comfort. Food for the day obviously is needed but it is a good idea to take a little extra in the form of ‘emergency rations’ such as chocolate, sultanas, nuts and raisins, mint cake and flapjack. On a hard day's walk you will need some 4000 calories and in cold, bad weather even more. I usually take a water bottle or a Thermos flask. Drinking from moorland streams can be dangerous: so often there is a dead sheep or cattle in or near the water and many people find the peaty water upsets their stomachs in any case.
Keeble Martin's Chapel, Walk 5
It is always wise to carry a spare sweater or thermal jacket, and a torch might well be of vital use if the walk takes longer than you expected and you have to finish in the dark.
I hope that you will never have to use it but a whistle to attract attention if need be, could save a life. The international distress signal is six long blasts on a whistle or six flashes with a torch in quick succession, then a minute's rest and then the signal is repeated followed by a minute's rest and so on until help comes. The answer, by the way, is three blasts or flashes followed by a minute's rest.
Next you might like to consider carrying a polythene survival bag or space blanket to shelter in if you or one of your party has an injury or suffers from hypothermia and has to lie out on the moor waiting for help. You will also need a small first-aid kit which you can either make up yourself or buy. It should contain bandages and dressings to deal with minor scrapes, cuts and blisters. On the subject of blisters it is far better to stop early on when the first slight burning soreness is noticed and put a plaster on. It is no good hoping it will go away. If you can feel it then the damage may have been done and blisters can ruin a day's walk. If you then add antiseptic cream, a triangular bandage, a crêpe bandage and finally some pain killing tablets these will make an excellent and useful first-aid kit to take for a day's walk.
Finally I know some people who like to carry a short length of nylon climbing rope with them on Dartmoor. I think that you are unlikely to have to use it except as a last resort to cross a flooded stream or river or to pull someone out of a deep bog! However, if you feel you need one, 30m of 9mm rope will be sufficient for Dartmoor, though for more mountainous regions you would need 45m.
Maps and compasses
For your safety and for you to get the maximum enjoyment from walking on Dartmoor it is wise to be proficient at understanding how to use your map and compass which are, of course, probably the most important bits of equipment you should have with you.
It does not take long to master elementary mapreading but I hope you will want to take it all a step further, for maps can tell you a vast number of interesting and important things about an area. More than anything else you have to be aware of the limitations of maps because they represent the three-dimensional features of our earth on a flat sheet of paper, but with practice this soon becomes no problem. I am fascinated by maps and spend hours just pouring over them and imagining the countryside they portray.
Dew on Conwebs
First you need to consider the scale. The Landranger Series of Great Britain have a scale of 2cm to 1km (1:50,000) or about 1.25 inches to the mile. You will need two sheets for the whole of Dartmoor: Sheet 191, Okehampton and North Dartmoor, and Sheet 202, Torbay and South Dartmoor. The Ordnance Survey has a Dartmoor map in its Outdoor Leisure series, Sheet 28. This is a marvellous map for detail as the scale is 4cm to 1km (1:25,000) or 2.5 inches to the mile, but as it covers the whole of Dartmoor it is a huge sheet and printed on both sides. The problems of folding and getting the relevant section that you want to use visible are enormous on windy, rainy days. Even if you prepare the map before you set off you are bound to want a section that is hidden!
You can of course buy smaller individual sheets of the 1:25,000 maps for both First and Second Series but you will need quite a few of them to cover longer walks. However, this scale is ideal for Dartmoor as many more details are shown as well as walls and small differences in height, both important when navigating on the moor.
Finally, Harvey Map Services has two Dartmoor maps (north and south Dartmoor) in its Mountain Recreation Series with a scale of 2.5cm to 1km (1:40,000). They use an orienteering style of presentation with different colours to indicate vegetation. The physical features of the moor are all important on this map and there are very few place names printed; the result is a very clear and uncluttered map.
Next you will need to consider the conventional signs; the shorthand of maps. Most sheets have the conventional signs printed on them. I was taught to repeat like a parrot that contours are imaginary lines joining all places of equal height. This may be so, but more important is to be able to read the contours so that you can see if you are going up or down or if it is a steep slope or a gentle slope and where there are valleys and gullies. It does not take long to get the feel of the land from them.
The parallel lines printed on all the maps that you are likely to use are the grid lines. Each line has a number to identify it. The numbers of the lines that run up and down the sheet increase as they move toward the right or east and the lines are called eastings. The ones that run across the map increase as they move up the sheet or north. They are called northings. Each of the squares created by the grid lines is 1km by 1km. The diagonal across the square from corner to corner is 1. 5km. Once you know this it is very quick and easy to estimate distance. Regardless of the scale of the map the grid squares are always 1km by 1km. Obviously the larger the scale of the map the larger the square will be on the map.
The other more important use of the grid lines is to give grid references and I shall be using these in the Guide to pinpoint places. You must always give the eastings first and than the northings. So to give the position of a large area such as a village you need only give a four figure reference to indicate the square. For example, the village of Holne lies in the square 70 eastings and 69 northings, in other words SX 7069. However, it is usual to give six figure references and to do this you will have to subdivide each square into tenths. You give the main number of the easting square followed by the tenths eastward followed by the main northing square and the tenths northward. For example, the reference for Dartmeet would be 672 eastings and 732 northings, given as just SX 672732. It must be remembered, though, that this actually represents a square 100m by 100m on the ground and if you want to become really accurate then eight figure references are better but to be honest it is almost impossible to work them out correctly. You should always prefix your grid reference with the grid letters as similar references recur at intervals of 100km. For Dartmoor these letters are SX but as I am only referring to Dartmoor I have not included them.
A lot of your navigation will be done visually and to do this you must orientate your map. I assume that you know where you are when you start! So to orientate your map you identify some features in the countryside such as a tor, a forest boundary or a building and you turn your map until the features are lined up with their representations on the map and everything else will fit into place.
Now you need to consider the compass. There are many different makes on the market ranging from simple ones costing £7.00 to £15.00 to the more СКАЧАТЬ