nigelswift wrote:
"useless in practice , unless you ignore the bogs , rivers , lochs and contours"
But he connected churches of any date (you just never know how often they are the site of something much older etc gets trotted out to justify the choice ),Iron Age " hill forts " ,moats , ponds , prehistoric sites , natural features .I don't know, it IS useful to have some prominently visible features at both your origin and destination, they give you a nice sense of the straight line between the two and then you make pragmatic diversions as and when you encounter bogs and rivers etc. I used to navigate in London that way, trying to keep the sun at a particular angle to my car for as much of the journey as possible. It works well and you can choose dozens of routes and go for miles and still get there or thereabouts efficiently. So I think Alfred was probably onto something but I agree, you could never demonstrate it on a map only on the ground - by seeing whether the points were prominently visible. So the 2 cases are rather similar.
People tend to know their environment and those tht manage to get around the world over don't seem to use his method .Outwith woodland and on the sea/oceans the sun and stars are useful elsewhere natural features can help ,but man made features are only useful in retrospect not built for that purpose .
