NNAS Silver Award Navigation Courses
The Silver Award is designed to take those with Bronze Award skills to the next level, after an appropriate period of consolidation by personal experience. It is not necessary to have passed the Bronze Award in order to undertake the Silver training. If you can read a map competently and can confidently follow paths and tracks, then it is best to start with the Silver Award.
The award focuses on navigation in the countryside using the skills acquired at the Bronze level and adding skills required to navigate to features and places some distance from paths and tracks. Accurate compass work is required and an ability to use appropriate navigation techniques to go cross-country.
This navigation course has a minimum of 12 hours of training including assessment over a distance of between 5 to 8 kilometres in appropriate terrain.
Each course starts at 9:30am on Saturday morning and finishes after lunch on Sunday.
Silver Award Syllabus
- Devise a strategy for a navigational stage, to break it down into 'coarse' and 'fine' navigation and to use clear features en-route to check that you are 'on course'
- Understand and apply the following components of a navigational strategy: 'aiming off', 'attack points', 'collecting features', simplifying navigation, and apply them in varying terrain
- Demonstrate an understanding of contour features, both large and small, on the map and on the ground
- Demonstrate an understanding of the navigational and physical factors affecting route choice
- Judge distance accurately on the map and on the ground
- Plan a safe walk or route involving Silver award skills and strategies
- Employ simple relocation strategies when lost
- Use a compass to follow accurate bearings and to check the direction of footpaths or other linear features on both map and ground
- Demonstrate knowledge of the effects of fatigue and physical discomfort brought on by navigating in demanding countryside and/or extreme weather conditions. Knowledge of basic first aid is also expected
- Demonstrate knowledge and application of the Countryside Code and current access legislation as for the Bronze level together with an appreciation of basic environmental factors in mixing 'man with nature' (e.g. footpath erosion and methods of dealing with it), and responsibilities towards other countryside interests like farming, forestry and conservation
NNAS Silver Award Courses |
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| Two-day course including training and assessment. | £120.00 per person | |
2012 course dates |
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| Saturday 14th to Sunday 15th April | Ambleside | |
| Saturday 12th to Sunday 13th May | Borrowdale | |
| Saturday 9th to Sunday 10th June | Ambleside | |
| Please contact us if your favoured date is not listed | ||