Longitude

The North Pole

When we were in Louth, I spotted a plaque on a wall in the town centre with a steel line reaching to it across the pavement. I was standing on the Prime Meridian line upon which Greenwich Mean Time was devised down in London. It was adopted internationally as recently as 1884.

Anyway, Sheffield is located seventy five miles west of the line. Our longitude position is about 1.5°W. Louth and Greenwich are of course located at 0.0°.

Some regular visitors may recall that I recently painted the word "WEST" on our garden wall. In a follow-up post I tracked the places that sit on the same line of latitude as Sheffield. They included Edmonton, Alberta in Canada - home to blogger Nurse Pixie - the author of "My Life So Far".

So following on from that, using an idea suggested by Tasker Dunham, I wondered what places might sit on our line of longitude. Of course that invisible line begins at The North Pole and heads south across the cold stormy waters of The North Atlantic and The North Sea.

Durham Cathedral

It first crosses land on the English coast of Northumberland before heading to Newcastle-upon-Tyne and down to Durham. Then it enters The People's Republic of Yorkshire, crossing Leeds before Sheffield, then down to Coventry and Oxford with its dreaming spires.

Pamplona, Spain

Over The English Channel and into western France where the only major city that is crossed is Nantes. Then onwards - over The Pyrenees and into Spain - crossing the city of Pamplona. On to The Mediterranean and down to Algeria where our uniting line of longitude passes over the town of Maghnia.

Maghnia, Algeria

Down to the Gao region of Mali and into Burkina Faso near Poedogo. Ever southward to Ghana where the line crosses Kumasi. Then leaving the coast of Africa, 1.5°W heads out across The South Atlantic. It does not pass over any islands that I can detect.

The next time the line meets land again is in Antarctica, at an area known as Queen Maud Land which is Norwegian territory. It would surely make a great holiday destination. See below:-

Queen Maud Mountains