To think you either have a sense of direction or don't?

[BeatleBattleInABottle]

My sense of direction has always been awful. I just can't "see" in my head how to get from place a to place b even in places I know. We regularly make a specific short journey in a place I've lived for 20 years. It's a bit twisty turny and I still have to think about how to get between the 2 places every time. There were diversions last time and I found it really hard to envisage a new route and it ended up taking twice as long as it should have done.

I also get disorientated very easily in places I don't know eg I can't tell whether we need to walk up the street or down.

It's one of the reasons I don't drive tbh. I can barely walk places, I'd be a menace in a car trying to figure out lanes etc at the same time.

It doesn't stop me going new places but I do get worried about getting lost. I'm going away this weekend with my youngest son to somewhere new and I'm really anxious. I'll still do it.

My husband and oldest son can go somewhere new and within half a day are acclimatised and just seem to know where to go. Like geese or something. They don't understand how I'm so rubbish at it.

I too have quite good pitch though!

I think there's a sliding scale of people who are excellent at remembering places, clues and building up a trail to instinctively work places out, and those that don't retain any of it and struggle with any kind of direction and a lot of margin in the middle.

DS1 can not remember his left and right. If you say 🖐 is Left, he still gets confused because of his dyslexic letter reversals and can't remember which way a letter L goes. He is very visual though and remembers landmarks (down to shapes of individual trees) He's a reasonable navigator although has an awkward tendancy to describe roundabouts as compass bearings which is a stage too much processing for me to visualise a protractor while working out what lane I want to be in and looking out for signs and nutters on the road.

DS2 is great. He'll do clock face descriptions. He's less observant about landmarks, but isn't bad. I like him as a navigator.

DH has gone sloppy since sat navs. He was more observant when he had to plan with an atlas and look out for signage and landmarks.

DH knows if I'm navigating that the hand is correct. If I'm flapping my right hand saying "turn left", follow the hand and ignore the verbal instruction. Somehow it gets garbled between brain and mouth.

I'm quite good at building up mental maps and looking for landmarks. I remember journeys well. I get caught out with DH forgetting routes when he was there 10 years ago so "should" remember it I had to get to know my county quickly when I moved here as a new driver and had to find work sites with the A-Z. I find hillier counties easier than flat ones though. I don't get on with east of the A1 so well as the landscape is more monotonous and I'm less attuned to it.

Nature has a lot of clues. Moss grows more on the shaded, damp north side. Trees tend to be thicker towards the light south side. Trees in exposed places are often battered from the west prevailing wind (or coastal winds). Compass positions from the sun angle on a bright day. The former are usually more useful for walking than driving though!

While some people may find it easier than others, like most things it is a skill that you can improve with practice.

Have a good sense of direction and usually act as navigator when travelling. I have always loved paper maps and enjoy looking at them, working out what the place names mean and where interesting bits of history and archaeology are lurking. Hate satnavs as you don't get the big picture of what's around - we often divert to see interesting looking places or to get onto smaller roads, and you need proper maps to do this.

Having said that, there are a few places that have defeated me completely for some reason and somehow blocked my directional cues, not quite sure why.
A friend brought up on the east coast of Scotland would get lost on the west coast because 'the sea wasn't on the right side'...

I have to always check my left/right too. It's not intrinsic to me. My son who is good at directions is awful at left/right though.

My Dad once told me I needed to head west. I asked how I'd know which way was West. He said, look at the sun. I asked the perfectly reasonable question "what if its cloudy?". My Dad was in hysterics and just didn't understand how I couldn't know which way was West. He couldn't tell me how to tell West if it was cloudy because I "should just know". But I don't!!!

Oh yes, that freaks me out too. Sea should be to the south.

Here’s your twin op! I walk into a shop and can’t remember whether to turn left or right when I come out! My ex husband and two dds on the other hand have a great sense of direction. Plus I now have brain fog from having high blood calcium so I’m even worse.

You know how pigeons have a little magnet at the top of their beak so they can tune in to the Earth's magnetic field and know which way to go? Maybe humans have a much weaker version of this? Some so weak it's useless?!

I don't have an instinctive sense of direction. I'm 50, have driven since I was 17, I can navigate with a sat nav but it's challenging. I don't know where north is, I can't see routes in my head.
And set me off on foot with Google maps and I have literally NO idea which direction to go in, which way the route is pointing, how to follow it on screen. I do much better with audio instructions though. I'm good at other practical stuff, just directions aren't my thing.

I am really poor at directions I am also quite face blind, I most definitely don't have perfect pitch.
My DD is even worse than me, she gets lost in our home town.
DH and DS are both really good and can usually find the way if they have been somewhere once.
I am not too bad at map reading, it seems that I have not much visual memory.
In a new town I use what 3 words so I can find the car again, and I take photos of distinctive buildings as I walk along so I can follow back the way I have walked.

Sounds a bit like my late OH, after dropping someone off at Piccadilly Station in Manchester he drove to Manchester airport to get back to Bolton, he couldn't work out how to get back because of one way streets etc..

@DuckieDodgyHedgyPiggy that's funny, my 81 year old dad keeps saying he's not like a pigeon and it took me ages to work out what he meant 😂. His sense of direction is worse than mine. Mum was incredible with directions, and so he just used to let her take control with navigating their works. So sadly, mum passed away last year, so he's quite literally lost without her.

I agree to an extent, in the sense that I still use SatNav for a 30 min journey to a hospital I’ve been to 4 times! I know I could do it but I just put it on out of laziness.

However, when I was in the Canary Islands with my mum and we hired a car (pre smart phones), I had no choice to navigate myself (without a sat nav) and it was absolutely fine!

Our brains can do so much more than we think they’re capable of!

I agree, OP. I am great at finding my way around and remembering routes. However... I have terrible time awareness and always underestimate how long it will take to get somewhere.

DP could not find his way out of a paper bag twice in a row, but is very good at estimating what time it is and how long things will take. Our combined skills are very useful!

Yeah, it's just one of those things that people seem to be naturally good or bad at. I wouldn't let it put you off driving though - you can use satnav for every journey if you want, so it's easier than trying to navigate on foot.