You're in the countryside and know you need to head north. Would you be able to work out which direction to go in without using a map, compass or your phone? If, like me, you would be curled up under a bush, crying and waiting for death in under two minutes, then navigator and writer Tristan Gooley has just the ticket – your ticket to understanding the great outdoors.

His latest book, The Walker’s Guide to Outdoor Clues and Signs, came out in paperback last week, is a Sunday Times bestseller and has just been named the BBC Countryfile Book of the Year. Next week he will be in conversation in Chorleywood, telling you all about ‘natural navigation’.

“The people who enjoy my work tend to be those who have an interest in the outdoors and who are looking to add a new level to that,” says Tristan, “walkers, nature lovers, gardeners. What I’m doing is taking very familiar things, like trees, stars, the sun, but allowing people to look at them in a fresh, different way.”

You will learn things like the 19 different ways of navigating using a tree, and other navigational tools Tristan details in the book, including fungi and lichens, the sky, weather, animals, lakes and rivers, snow and sand.

“Take trees,” he says. “Everybody’s familiar with them but most people don’t actually look at them. Some of the ways you can use them are common sense, like a tree grows more abundantly on the south side than the north because that’s where it gets most of its light. But some things are subtler – the branches grow almost vertically on the north side and almost horizontally on the south side.”

Tristan had an adventurous spirit from a young age and by 14 had realised he was fascinated by navigation.

“Most people think of getting from A to B, where they’re going to – I was always interested in the bit in between.

“Navigation is one of the fundamental parts of being human,” he continues. “If you think of any human being, anywhere in the world, in the last 24 hours they would have eaten something, drunk something, slept and navigated. Even if you’ve only got out of bed, you had to choose which side – that’s navigation.”

Rather than going all-out and having yourself blindfolded and dropped in the middle of a forest at night, Tristan suggests starting small.

“Once a day, ask yourself the question: Which way am I looking? And then try and answer it with what you can see outdoors. You might see the sun and think ‘It’s morning so I must be looking roughly east’, or a spider’s web might give you a clue or a bit of sheep’s wool on a gorse bush. You can have a huge amount of fun.

“It’s not about life or death survival, it’s just about finding the outdoors that little bit more fascinating.”

  • An Evening with Tristan Gooley is at Chorleywood Memorial Hall, Common Road, Chorleywood on Wednesday, June 3 from 7.30pm. Details: 01923 283566, chilternbookshops.co.uk