I didn't think I was afraid of the dark, but then it's not often that I find myself wandering around a forest at night - on my own. My eyes start to play tricks on me: shadows dart between bushes, and the rope-swings that hang from branches look like nooses in the gloom. Insects crackle, a solitary tawny owl hoots, and it all feels very Blair Witch. And I am a little bit lost.

What would Ged Lawless do? No, not a character from an Andy McNab book, but the former paratrooper who runs the UK Survival School, and who has just been teaching me how to navigate at night. Lawless is out there in the forest somewhere, and I know that if I start shouting he'll come and rescue me, but really, that would be pathetic. As would ringing him on his mobile phone. I can do this myself.

There really isn't much to it, after all. The first sensible lesson is that, if possible, you shouldn't bother trying to find your way in the dark at all, but just stay put until dawn. Because then you won't trip over things? "Well, mainly because you'll have an idea of direction," Lawless had told me as we walked around this forest on the edge of Hereford some time around midnight. "Where does the sun rise?" East, of course. "You'll be amazed at how many people don't know that," he says. They probably don't deserve to survive, I think meanly.

Apparently, the area underneath a holly bush provides a good, if spiky, makeshift shelter – they are dense, and evergreen.

The next thing to do – or rather not to do – is panic, for the obvious reason that unless there is someone there to hear you scream, it will get you nowhere. How does Lawless cope if he's frightened (not, I imagine, something that happens often)? "I try to think of nice, happy things," he says.

There is always a point in films when a person who is lost in the desert or the snow, dehydrated and exhausted, comes across a set of their own footprints and realises they have just walked in a huge, round, life-sapping circle. This appears to be the case in real life. A recent study in Germany found that, without the sun or the moon (or landmarks) as a fixed guide, people will walk around in circles. It was originally thought that this could be because one leg is often slightly longer than the other, or is stronger, but the scientists found that their subjects didn't just walk in one direction, as they would if that was the case. Instead, it appears that lots of small errors add up over time so the brain can't correctly identify the "straight ahead" direction. "To just get out of somewhere, pick a spot on the horizon and just head for it," Lawless advises.

After a while, I become more used to the forest's inherent eeriness, helped by Lawless's cheery presence and his assertion that "some forests just have a bad feeling about them, but this one doesn't". We are chatting away happily about his survival skills. Has he ever been close to death somewhere? "I nearly got hypothermia once," he says. Has he ever had to eat a rat for survival purposes? "Yes," he says. What did it taste like? "Squirrel."

Is there anything you can do to improve your night vision? "Eat your carrots," says Lawless. Really? "No, that was a joke. I don't think there's anything you can do." He says it takes around 10 to 15 minutes for your eyes to adjust to the lack of light. "You won't see a lot if you stare at something – you have to use your peripheral vision." This is because the two types of receptor in the retina – rods and cones – perform differently. Cones provide us with colour, while rods are more sensitive to light – it is rods we rely on in low light, and the majority of these are sited at the outer edges of the retina, which is why our peripheral vision is more effective.

If you know which direction you need to go in, there are several ways to find this in the dark, and by far the best is to establish north using the stars. For this you do need to know a bit of basic astronomy, but most people can identify the Plough, which is part of Ursa Major. It looks a lot like a saucepan. The Plough rotates through the sky, but let's imagine the saucepan lying horizontally, with its handle on the left. You need to trace a line from the star at the right-hand base of the pan, through the star at the right-hand rim, and follow it upwards; the north star is roughly five times the distance between those two "pointer" stars. "Then drop a vertical line from the north star to the horizon and that's north," says Lawless.

Tonight is very cloudy and I can't see the Plough. Luckily, it is quite windy. "Keep in mind that almost all of our weather comes from a south-westerly direction," says Lawless (this only works if you are in the British Isles). Unless it's a bitterly cold wind, he adds, in which case it will be coming from the north. But tonight we just have a breeze, so that will tell me which way is south-west. To find the direction, you can throw light bits of dried-out grass in the air and see which way they blow; lick your finger and hold it up (I still don't believe this really works); or, if there are clouds and patches of clear sky, see which way they blow across the stars. Or if you have long hair, like me, you can use it as a kind of wind sock (this gives me the edge over Lawless, who doesn't have much hair).

You can also get an idea of direction from leggy plants. If they look as if they have been blown over, they will probably be pointing north-east (because the wind that blew them over will have come from the south-west). If they are simply leaning in one direction as they grow, there's a good chance that is south (they will be reaching towards the sun), but this isn't always a reliable indicator. It has been said that moss only grows on the north side of tress, but this is a myth, says Lawless. "But sphagnum moss contains iodine [which has anti-bacterial properties] and makes a good field dressing," he says, which is handy for when you inevitably trip over branches or brambles in the dark.

"Right, off you go," he says. "See if you can get a feel for the forest." I wander around in the dark on my own. I test wind direction, I look for the stars. I'm sure I could have made it back to Lawless with no real problem, but after about half an hour he starts calling my name with a note of slight panic in his voice, and I can see his head torch glinting between the trees in the distance. Remembering his advice for picking a point and heading straight towards it, that is what I do.

Contact the UK Survival School by visiting uksurvivalschool.co.uk or calling 01432 376751

Basic navigation



• Pick something in the distance – an unusual tree or rock you can see against the horizon – and head straight for it. This will save you from walking around in circles

• Use the weather. In the British Isles, winds tend to blow in from the south-west. An easy way to find the direction of the wind is to look at the sky and see how the clouds are passing over the stars

• If plants look as if they have been blown in one direction, there's a good chance this will have been from a south-westerly wind – so they will be pointing north-east. If plants are simply growing in one direction, they usually point roughly south

The north star