The historic alignment of true, magnetic and grid north has left England today at Berwick-upon-Tweed, moving into the North Sea. This marks the end of a rare three-year period where all three 'norths' coincided over English territory.
True north points to the geographic North Pole, grid north follows the vertical blue lines on Ordnance Survey (OS) maps, and magnetic north is the direction a compass needle points. The triple alignment first occurred in November 2022 at Langton Matravers in Dorset, the first such event since the 1600s.
According to the British Geological Survey (BGS) and OS, the alignment will next hit land at the end of October 2025 in Drums, Scotland, passing through Mintlaw and ending in Fraserburgh around mid-December 2026 before returning to the North Sea. The OS predicts the alignment will not return to England for hundreds of years due to the slow movement of magnetic north.
The alignment began in 2014 when magnetic north became east of grid north for some locations in Great Britain for the first time in over 350 years. While navigators using compasses had to adjust their bearings, OS stated that good map and compass users already account for such differences, so the change has minimal practical impact.
During its time in England, the alignment moved northwards through Poole, Chippenham, Birmingham, and Hebden Bridge, covering 576 km in 1,127 days at an average of 511 metres per day. Dr Ciarán Beggan, geophysicist at BGS, called it a 'once-in-a-lifetime occurrence' and noted that the magnetic field is unpredictable in the long term.
