Better Orienteering is built around a navigation model – Plan, Picture, Direction – It is used across Better Orienteering. You will read about it in the skills discussions. The model can work for beginners, intermediates and elites. It provides a simple way to remember what you understand about orienteering navigation.

Plan, Picture, Direction in this form has been developed by Duncan Bayliss. It is based on a fuller model by Kris Jones and the terms are not used in exactly the same way here as in his model. In the Advanced/ Elite version, terms from the orienteering models developed by Michel Guergiou (Tactical Mental Route and Terrain Library, Zoom map reading) and Martin Lerjen (Beacons, affirmative map reading) are incorporated.

Feedback from other orienteers has been included, for instance also explicitly mentioning distance under the Direction heading (Lynne Walker, Mark Nixon), I had originally left it as something that was part of direction, but I can see the value in reminding people that Direction always goes together with Distance. The challenge is to keep PPD simple enough to be easy to remember and use, while linking it to enough detail about the thought processes going on in orienteering. This is why there are several versions of PPD on Better Orienteering from Beginner to Advanced/ Elite.

This section collects all the examples of Plan, Picture, Direction together in one place. More examples will be added as I get time to make them.

Beginner

Basic

Here is a second example with more detail, linked to a video by O-Ringen TV

Intermediate

Advanced

This example is based on a video by O-Ringen TV.

Janne Troeng talks through the process of identifying a reliable route, and how to execute it.

Now watch the video:

Improved version of PPD for Advanced / Elite orienteers, following feedback.

At an Advanced level you are continually updating your Plan, Picture and Direction on a rolling basis. You no longer think one leg of the course at a time.

You can also relate Plan, Picture Direction to all the skills discussions across Better Orienteering