Bearings

A bearing is a way of describing a direction as an angle. It is always measured in degrees, clockwise from North, and written with three figures — so a bearing always has a leading zero or two when it is small, like 045^\circ, 130^\circ or 270^\circ.

The four main compass directions are easy to read off:

North is 000^\circ;
East is 090^\circ;
South is 180^\circ;
West is 270^\circ.

Turning all the way round brings you back to North at 360^\circ, so every bearing lies between 000^\circ and 360^\circ.

A bearing describes a direction by an angle:

it is measured clockwise from North;
it is always written with three figures, from 000^\circ to 360^\circ;
the back bearing — the direction from B back to A, given the bearing of B from A — is that bearing \pm\,180^\circ (add 180^\circ if the bearing is under 180^\circ, subtract it if it is over);
combine bearings with right-angled trigonometry to turn directions into distances.

See a bearing

Step through the figure: a North line, a direction, and the angle swept clockwise from North to reach it.