Page 40 - 2023 AMA Spring

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NATIONAL NAVIGATION AWARD SCHEME (NNAS) SILVER AND GOLD NAVIGATION
Dartmoor National Park 12 – 15 December 2022
Alex Jalland
It was a brisk morning in Wyvern Barracks as four budding walkers squeezed into my hatchback after a cracking breakfast in the local café. We bolted across the frozen moor roads to Princetown to meet our NNAS navigation instructors. Mel and Jerry guided us through the silver award syllabus at an accelerated rate when they discovered we had good experience from prior military navigation training and expeditions. The group commented on how much they had learnt through Individual Training Requirements / Military Annual Training Tests which had conse- quently set us all up to complete the silver award with ease. We had hoped to learn some high-level skills and perhaps some night-time navigation with stars, micro-nav or GPS, but this was not to be... perhaps we would cover this in the gold award.
With the two-day silver award complete, we cracked straight on to the gold. Another round of café breakfasts and hot chocolates were needed to combat the freezing wind blowing across Dartmoor. Much more of the same in terms of navigation, but still none at night, although plenty of micro-nav focussed on small
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contour features with a healthy amount of competition between individual legs. Two days for the gold, and pass certificates all round.
Having not been to Dartmoor before, I can highly recommend it. The National Park’s lack of aggressive features, unlike the Brecon Beacons, forces all manner of walkers into more thorough checks and observations of the ground to ensure they are in the right place.