The Degree Confluence Project

The goal of the project is to visit each of the latitude and longitude integer intersections in the world, and to take pictures at each location. The pictures and stories about the visits are posted at www.confluence.org.
The project is an organized sampling of the world. There is a confluence within 49 miles (79 km) of you if you’re on the surface of Earth. The confluences in the oceans and some near the poles are discounted, but there are still 10,998 to be found.

What are they talking about?
You know those lines that go up and down, and left to right on maps and globes? Well, people are going out and finding the points where they cross and taking photos which they post at the website. Also, the stories of how they got them.
There’s a bit of a rush on to be the first to post each confluence. Honest.

Some of the stories are pretty gripping.  Here is a small part of a long account written by American, Joseph Kerski of how he got on with 52°N 0°:

‘….for this confluence, I chose to take the 7:51am train from Kings Cross Station in London to Royston, a village to the north of the confluence, and hike in from there.

The faces of the inhabitants of the village of Royston betrayed no awareness of the fact that their village lay on the Prime Meridian, yet I was tingling with excitement as I walked silently among them. After a 25-minute walk through the City Centre from the train station, I struck out toward the southeast on Barkway Road. The road was surprisingly well travelled for a country road, and I had to be alert to jump up on the “verge” whenever a car appeared. Nevertheless, it was an exceedingly pleasant hike, up a substantial slope to get out of the village, and again up again after passing by a large, well-kept horse ranch.’

‘Horse ranch’?

‘E don’t be from around ‘ere do ‘e?

Now I’ve been to Royston, and those people are well aware that they live on a Prime Meridian, they just don’t go on about it.  If strangers come sniffing around asking awkward questions they are likely to turn violent, which explains why Mr Kerski was forced to jump out of the way of cars so often.

It’s like that film, ‘The Wicker Man’, except there’s no Britt Ekland.  Or Wicker Man, actually.

So, if you want to be part of the project I suggest you visit the website, choose an unvisited confluence and get out there with your camera.  I notice that only 1 of 13 confluences in Afghanistan has been visited, for some reason, so that might be an easy start for you.  You could even borrow some of Mr Kerski’s text if you substitute ‘car’ with ‘tank’ and ‘horse-ranch’ with ‘opium farm’.

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