Learning to use a compass to take bearings was an essential part of the training for our Chief Scout's Challenge but was not so necessary as we were cycling and had a detailed map of the route.

The compass used on the Challenge had a case with degrees printed on it and incorporated a needle that was able to rotate. This allowed us to make bearings for the Route Plans for use on the hike.

Some skills we already knew, but others like aiming off and resections were new to us. Resections are used to find your position on a map. You take a bearing of three landmarks that you can see, you then draw them onto your map and your position is somewhere within the triangle where they join. We had to work with maps for long enough so that we could almost picture the landscape by looking at the map. This requires a knowledge of contours, scales and map symbols. Aiming off is walking to one side of your target and then walking back up to it. For example if you want to find a bridge in the fog, go to the left of it and then walk upstream until you find it. If you walk straight for it and miss it you don’t know whether to walk downstream or upstream.

We also had to learn about the three North’s - magnetic North, grid North and true North. Magnetic North is four degrees west of grid North. So if we took a bearing from the map we would add the appropriate variation. If taking it from the compass to the map we would subtract that figure. Although four degrees doesn’t seem a lot, if you were hiking for miles and miles to a specified landmark you could miss it if you didn’t allow for magnetic variation.