Across the Water

Over the past several years, I have found rowing to be a good form of exercise and also a great way to learn geography.

I recently learned a bit about the geography of New Zealand from a nice article about an epic rowing trip around the Hauraki Gulf north of Auckland.

The maps accompanying the article make effective use of the kind of tracking software we sometimes use to document our own, more modest rowing adventures.

Like all good cartography, the presentation here is elegant. Minimal information is shown -- a couple of place names, a bar scale, and the land in uniform grey without any surface features. (I made the grey a bit darker here, because the original does not show up well on my laptop screen.)

The actual rowing tracks are shown in red -- the entire journey in two long legs, with the segment associated with each day's blog entry shown with a bolder line.

The Guardian article describes the journey and also features gorgeous photography of the boats, the land, the sea, and the people who engaged in this epic adventure of human-powered travel.

All of this activity started a world away -- almost literally -- among rowers in Fife, Scotland!