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There is a particular pleasure in walking a route you have planned yourself: the map spread on the kitchen table, the route beginning to make sense, and the quiet satisfaction of arriving at a stile you picked out a week earlier. Learning to read a map on foot is not difficult. It is a skill built from a handful of simple ideas, practised on gentle walks before you need them in earnest.

Choose a map that suits your walk

For walking, you want a topographic map — one that shows the shape of the land, not just the roads. In Britain these come in two useful scales. A 1:25,000 map shows four centimetres for every kilometre on the ground, which is generous enough to reveal field boundaries, footpaths, walls and small streams. A 1:50,000 map is lighter and covers more ground, but paths are less precise.

Start with 1:25,000 for anything on foot. Before you leave the house, spend ten minutes with the legend:

• Check how footpaths, bridleways and permissive paths are drawn, and what the dotted lines mean.
• Find the contour interval — usually 10 metres — so you know what each brown line represents.
• Note the date of the map. Field boundaries change, and new forestry can swallow a track entirely.

Grid references: the language of the map

Every British topographic map is covered in faint blue squares, each one kilometre across. Those squares let you describe any point in the country with a few digits, which is exactly what you need when telling someone where you are.

The rule to remember is along the corridor, then up the stairs. Read the easting first — the vertical line to the left of your point — then the northing, the horizontal line below it. A four-figure reference gives you the whole square, which is fine for a car park. A six-figure reference narrows it to 100 metres, and that is what you should give a friend before setting off.

To do it accurately, divide the square in your head into ten along each side. If your point sits three-tenths across and seven-tenths up square 482 631, the six-figure reference is 4823 6317. Write it down. Practise on your own street until it feels automatic.

Contours: reading the shape of the land

Contours are the lines that tell you whether a walk will be a stroll or a slog. Each one joins points of equal height, and the numbers printed along them give the height in metres. Where lines are far apart, the ground is gentle. Where they crowd together, it is steep — sometimes very steep indeed.

Some patterns are worth memorising. Tight circles that shrink inwards are summits. Rings with a small tick mark or a hachure pointing inwards are hollows or depressions. Where a contour forms a V pointing uphill, you are looking at a valley or re-entrant; where it forms a V pointing downhill, you have a spur or ridge. Following a ridge is generally easier going than following a valley, where paths are often boggy and the ground uneven.

Using a compass without fear

A basic baseplate compass is all you need. Hold it flat and let the red needle settle — it always points to magnetic north. To take a bearing from the map, lay the compass edge along the line you want to walk, turn the bezel until its orienting lines line up with the map's grid lines, then lift the compass and turn your whole body until the red needle sits inside the orienting arrow. Walk in that direction.

Two habits make this much easier. First, learn to set the map: lay it flat, place the compass on it, and rotate the map until the grid lines match the needle. Everything then sits in front of you exactly as it does on the ground. Second, check the margin for the local difference between grid north and magnetic north. In Britain it is small, but it is not nothing, and it changes over the years.

Pacing, handrails and catching features

Navigation on foot is largely about knowing how far you have come. On easy ground with a light pack, most people walk about four kilometres an hour, slower uphill. A reasonable estimate is one hour for every five kilometres, plus an extra hour for every 300 metres of ascent.

Counting paces helps in poor visibility or thick woodland: most adults take roughly 60 to 70 double paces per 100 metres, though it is worth measuring your own on a marked stretch of road. Then use the landscape to keep yourself honest:

• Handrails are linear features you can follow — a wall, a stream, a forest edge — that keep you on course without constant checking.
• Catching features are things you cannot miss, like a road or a river, that tell you if you have overshot.
• Aiming off means deliberately heading slightly to one side of your target so that, when you hit the handrail, you know which way to turn.

Before you go: leave a route plan

None of the above replaces the simplest safety measure there is. Tell someone where you are going and when you expect to be back. Give them a grid reference for the start and finish, a rough sketch of the route, the colour of your jacket, and a time by which they should raise the alarm if they have not heard from you.

Carry the map and compass even when the sun is shining and your phone is charged — batteries fail in the cold, and signal comes and goes in the hills. Start with a short, well-marked route near home, take your time, and let the reading of the land become part of the walk rather than a task bolted onto it.