What are bearings?

A compass doesn’t just tell you which way is north. It is also a method of finding direction. If you take a bird’s eye view of your location, one direction will be north another west, east, south and so on. From north, we measure direction in degrees like the numbers on a clock. These start at 0 at north, to 90 at east, to 180 at south, to 270 at west and back up to 360 at north to complete the circle. These angles are called bearings.

Using your compass you can find out what the bearing is from you to another location and also tell you which way to point if you wish to follow a certain bearing.

Using these bearings, you cannot only work out which direction to walk, you can also find out where you are.

Triangulation

By taking a number of distant landmarks (normally 3 but maybe more), you can draw lines on your map along these bearings to each of the landmarks. These lines will cross at a certain location and leave a triangle shape (if 3 bearings are taken). This triangle will be your approximate location. Taking more than 3 bearings will increase the accuracy of your location but makes it quite a laborious process. This principle is called ‘triangulation’.

The following animation explains how to take a bearing of something your can see in the distance, how to translate it to something on the map and the principle of triangulation.