Why Only 2 Countries Are Double-Landlocked

Rob Bell:
Hello, and welcome to Sketchplanations The Podcast.

Facts and fascinations to help fuel your own interesting conversations.

I'm engineer and broadcaster, Rob Bell, and with me is the creator and talent behind Sketchplanations, Jono Hey.

Jono Hey:
Hello.

Rob Bell:
And entrepreneur and past winner of The Apprentice, Tom Pellereau.

Hello, Tom.

Tom Pellereau:
And potentially totally pointless, who knows?

Rob Bell:
Potentially, Tom was an answer on the BBC daytime quiz show Pointless this evening.

And we're all rather excited about it.

My dad especially was.

But we digress.

This time on the podcast, we're drilling down into Jono's sketch about double landlocked countries.

What?

Well, exactly.

Now, you should be able to see the sketch as the artwork for this episode.

But if you want to see it in full, you can also find it at sketchplanations.com.

And when you do see the sketch, thanks to the genius of what Sketchplanations is all about, you will very quickly understand what double landlocked means.

But what would this podcast be if we didn't ask Jono to describe the sketch and explain in words what a double landlocked country is?

Jono, hit it.

Jono Hey:
Can I just say first that the reason I have a sketch about this is because in my family, we enjoy strange, unusual geographic facts about the world.

Quite often, we're trading these things.

In particular, my cousins who've done a lot of travel periodically surprised me with interesting facts.

One of the things they surprised me one day was this idea of double landlocked.

I get the feeling that most people know what landlock means.

It means that you don't have a coast, you can't get to the sea or the ocean.

In particular, when you're talking about, and we can get to definitions, there's different ways to define this stuff.

The traditional definition of landlock is the big oceans, the Atlantic, Pacific, which are also connected.

There are some inland seas, which you could be joining an inland sea and you would still be a landlocked nation because you're not collected to the open ocean, the great seas.

Rob Bell:
I mean, the UK isn't landlocked, but what about the North Sea?

It's a big open expanse of water.

Jono Hey:
And it connects to the Atlantic and the Arctic and all of this.

Generally speaking, our water systems are connected.

But there are a few, like the Caspian Sea, which is an inland sea and doesn't connect directly to any of the big ones.

Anyway, so if you're landlocked, you don't have a coastline.

So you can't just launch a ship straight into the Atlantic or the Pacific or the Indian or whatever.

So that's, I figure most people know that.

And it turns out, so there's some, a number of, a large number of landlocked countries.

So for example, a lot of countries in the middle of Africa, a long way away from the coast, and they have no coastline.

And there's a couple of countries in South America that also have one, so Bolivia and Paraguay, for example.

So they are landlocked.

And it turns out that there are just two countries which qualify as double landlocked.

Rob Bell:
Two countries in the entire world?

Jono Hey:
Yeah, to my knowledge, to my knowledge, there are just two countries.

And to be double landlocked, that means that if you're single landlocked, you have to pass through another country in order to access the oceans.

Rob Bell:
Yeah, because you don't have your own border with the ocean.

Jono Hey:
And if you're double landlocked, you have to pass through two separate countries in order to get to the oceans.

So first of all, you have to pass through a country which is a landlocked country and doesn't have access to the ocean.

Then you have to keep going through another one until you get to the coast.

And yeah, there are just two of these countries.

Rob Bell:
There is another way of defining a double landlocked country then as being a country that is entirely surrounded by landlocked countries.

If you have to go through those first and then another country to get to the water.

Jono Hey:
Exactly.

You are entirely surrounded by landlocked countries.

Rob Bell:
Right.

Good.

Jono Hey:
I expect you probably want to know which ones they are.

Yes, I would think, Jono.

Rob Bell:
Which ones are they?

I mean, I've seen the sketch, so, you know, this is within the pretense of podcast production.

But yes, which ones are they?

Jono Hey:
One of them is a very tiny country, which I put in the sketch, which is called Liechtenstein.

And I know that it is an extremely tiny country because it's surrounded by, I think, Switzerland and Austria, which are themselves landlocked countries.

And it must be a tiny country because I've had this sketch out for a long time.

And it's in my book, Big Ideas, Little Pictures.

And I realized in the sketch, I have a spelling mistake in Liechtenstein that nobody has ever told me about.

And I only only spotted tonight.

Rob Bell:
Is that in the book as well, Jono?

Jono Hey:
It probably is, which was which was fact checked carefully by many people.

But so few people know about Liechtenstein, nor are capable of spelling it, evidently, including me.

So I spelt it correctly in the descriptions because, you know, those things get checked.

But apparently I made a mistake there.

So Liechtenstein is one of these small country in Europe.

The other the other country is one of the Stans.

It's Uzbekistan.

Rob Bell:
Uzbekistan is a double landlocked country.

Jono Hey:
Yeah.

So Uzbekistan is surrounded by landlocked countries, which are Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan.

Rob Bell:
Brilliant.

Jono Hey:
I think Turkmenistan maybe borders the Caspian Sea.

Yeah.

But that doesn't itself connect to the Atlantic.

Caspian Sea is actually really interesting.

It's what's called an Endorheic basin, which is basically where the water only flows in.

It doesn't flow out, so the water flows in, and all the water in the Caspian Sea that gets lost is through evaporation.

Rob Bell:
Oh, wow.

Okay.

Jono Hey:
So, that's just why all those stars count as landlocked, and why Uzbekistan has surrounded by all of those, counts as double landlocked.

Tom Pellereau:
But surely there's got to be a bit of a Stuart's inquiry, because Kazakhstan is very much on the Caspian Sea, which has the word sea in.

So, is the Caspian Sea misnamed, then, by this definition?

Rob Bell:
Do you want to explain that, Tom?

Tom Pellereau:
I know you do, but it's a C.

So, really, there's just Liechtenstein spelled in at least one way.

Jono Hey:
So, as I wrote in the thing, I said, if you live in a double landlocked country, you must cross at least two national waters before reaching a coastline connected to the oceans.

Rob Bell:
OK, nice.

You've been very specific about that.

Jono Hey:
Yeah.

So, Caspian Sea doesn't count on, as I said.

Tom Pellereau:
So, I'd like to ask a question, please, about a part of the world that is very topical, I meant, the Straits of Hormuz.

Now, if you zoom in on the Straits of Hormuz, obviously you see United Arab Emirates, Dubai.

There are a number of very confusing borders in that area, which make up part, I think, of the United Arab Emirates, which looks like countries inside countries.

But there's one country that looks almost like it's quadruple landlocked.

Jono Hey:
Yes.

Rob Bell:
What country is that?

Tom Pellereau:
Well, I think it's an emirate.

I'm almost tempted.

N-A-H-W-A is inside N-I-B-A-H, which is then inside another one.

It's like, what?

I don't know this region at all.

It's fascinating.

Do you know what?

Jono Hey:
I was reading about this.

I did learn there is something called recursive countries.

In particular, I saw a video about an example where there is a, and maybe this is what you're talking about, Tom, which is apparently there is a United Arab Emirate village in a small part of Oman, which is within the United Arab Emirates.

And so it's a part of a country within a part of a country within a country, which becomes a recursive country, apparently, for various historical reasons.

So that might be what you're talking about, but I think those ones don't count or change the definition of a landlock because those countries still have other parts of their country, which does border water that is part connected to the oceans.

But yeah, there are in general lots of, I don't know, it's fascinating.

You could just zoom around maps probably all night and keep finding stuff.

It's just brilliant.

Rob Bell:
Tommy, are you surprised there are only two double landlocked countries in the entire world?

Tom Pellereau:
Yes, I think it's always surprising to hear there's only two and there's quite so much land and countries in the world.

But at the same time, landlocked are relatively rare because ports historically have been so important for commerce and trading in just a country's well-being.

So many countries obviously have significant coastlines and ports.

And there's brilliant books about this, Prisoners of Geography being an excellent one, about this kind of reason why countries have ports and the need for them, and why they tend to merge together if they don't.

Rob Bell:
So as a landlocked country and then especially as a double landlocked country, to your point, Tommy, economically and politically to some extent, you're very dependent on your neighbours then, aren't you?

Economically for trade, as you mentioned, because so much trade moves around the world via our seas.

Obviously there's air travel, but so much of it goes around by sea.

So economically, you'd be very dependent on your neighbours.

Tom Pellereau:
Yeah, which puts you in a really difficult position.

Rob Bell:
It does, doesn't it?

So that does affect you as a country who is landlocked and especially double landlocked.

Tom Pellereau:
Yeah, and air travel is obviously relatively recent.

Especially air freight is incredibly expensive.

So one of the things that's not entirely obvious about a country like Russia, which has the most enormous coastline, but so much of that is frozen, that is therefore unusable.

That's why Crimea happened, why they felt they had to invade and take over Crimea.

So that gives them a fresh water port.

Because they're only other ones.

Yeah, they're only other ones which then go out into the Baltic Sea.

You can't get a Navy in and out of the Baltic Sea very easily because you've got to go through Copenhagen and Denmark and there's such a pinch point there, which is why they felt they had to take the action that they did.

Because ports are so vital.

Rob Bell:
I mean, it does highlight how lucky we might consider ourselves here in the UK, right?

Tom Pellereau:
We're unbelievably lucky.

Rob Bell:
Well, I should say Great Britain, actually.

Tom Pellereau:
Yeah.

Rob Bell:
In Great Britain, we don't share a border with anyone.

It's all sea.

That's excluding Northern Ireland.

We don't have that dependency politically on other countries, and other potentially aggressive countries or countries we're falling out with.

I know it's just an invisible line, but those borders can be quite meaningful.

I mean, there's a bit of a bother to have to go across the sea for our holidays, but economically and historically, it's been a huge advantage, right?

Tom Pellereau:
And also, we've got loads of deep sea ports.

It's not only that we've got loads of coastline, because if you think about the west coast of France, there are very few actual ports along there because it's quite a lot of sand.

So you get La Rochelle and you get Bordeaux, but actually their best port is Marseille and Calais.

So not only in the UK we've got great coastline, we've also got London, Felixstowe, Plymouth, Liverpool.

We've got loads of really good deep sea ports, which was why we became such an incredible sailing nation.

Rob Bell:
Geographically blessed, you might say.

Tom Pellereau:
Incredibly so, yeah.

Rob Bell:
Yeah, good point.

What's the name of that book Tommy?

Tom Pellereau:
Prisoners of Geography is the first one.

Rob Bell:
You don't know who it's by the-

Tom Pellereau:
Of course I do, it's Tim Marshall.

Actually, I actually listened to an interview from him recently.

He's a fascinating guy.

What's amazing is his book from about 10 years ago, totally predicted the Straits of the Moves being closed.

It's like one of the things, so it's an incredible read.

Actually, one of those books was like, why didn't I learn all of this in history of geography when I was 12?

Jono Hey:
It's funny even to distinguish in a way history and geography in that sense, because history depends so much on geography.

Tom Pellereau:
Yes.

Jono Hey:
I put Bolivia as a classic example of a landlocked country, but Bolivia has a Navy, which I remember thinking, that's crazy.

But of course, it has Lake Titicaca, which is a huge lake, and it also has major rivers which it patrols.

But I learned that Bolivia used to have access to the sea and then lost it in a battle or in a war against Chile and they still have grievances against it because of this little part of land where they used to be connected to the ocean and no longer now they have to rely on other countries giving them access to the ports and things.

It's still a point of contention.

Rob Bell:
I am quite surprised when I first saw your sketch about this, Jono, because I'd be almost certain that there must be a double landlocked country in Africa.

Jono Hey:
Me too.

Rob Bell:
Being such a big continent.

And so I had to have a good look at it.

And then when you do see it, you think, okay, they are quite big countries across Africa over large land masses.

So even in the middle, right in the middle of Africa, where you think there must be one, there are big countries that have a coastline.

And once you're down into the southern part of Africa, they come right across halfway towards the east or the west.

Big countries.

Jono Hey:
In some ways, it's remarkable that the size of Lichtenstein, if you were to stick it in Africa, you'd barely notice it right on the map.

It counts as double landlocked.

But if you're somewhere in Central Democratic Republic of Congo, you're a long way from the ocean.

Rob Bell:
That's what I was looking at.

Well, do you notice that's a really good point, right?

Just because we're talking about being double landlocked, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're a long way from the ocean.

There are countries that have coastlines where you could be still in that country and further away from the sea than you would be in either of the double landlocked countries.

Jono Hey:
Yeah.

Rob Bell:
I mean, I'm thinking China.

I think you said DRC there as well.

Yes, I can see that from the map here.

Jono Hey:
The US as well.

Tom Pellereau:
What's amazing about Lichtenstein is it's on one of the biggest rivers in Europe.

It's on the Rhine, which is an enormous river that came cuts all the way up through Germany.

It's the German-French border and then Belgium and into the English channel, as we like to call it.

It's actually very well served by ports, even though it's double landlocked.

Jono Hey:
Because the rivers make such a big difference and some of them are really navigable.

But of course, if the river wholly goes through another country, you're still somewhat at the mercy, just as if you're like Egypt and you're at the end of the Nile compared to the countries further up.

You can do things to the river when you get the end of the river.

But I was looking at distances.

Because I put in the description that I've always just taken for granted the coast.

I guess you don't really think about it in Britain.

I learned that the furthest point from the coast you can be in Britain is 113 kilometres.

Rob Bell:
That's nothing.

That's nothing.

Jono Hey:
It's just over an hour's drive, if that.

Tom Pellereau:
Bambury, which town is it?

There is, do you know?

Jono Hey:
It's a tiny little village.

No, I can't remember the name.

But yeah, so it's like 70 miles or something.

So even in France, I think you can be like 400 kilometres from the sea, even though, of course, it's got enormous coastline.

And then I think there is a place called, because I looked it up, the furthest point from the sea is from the open oceans is in China.

And that's called the Eurasian Pole of Inaccessibility, which isn't, I'm not going to say right, but Shenzhen, I think, which is about 2,600 kilometres from the oceans there.

So just, this is great.

Rob Bell:
I don't know about you boys, have you got Google Maps up on your screens?

Of course, as well, yeah.

As we talk about all this, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jono Hey:
It's just so fascinating.

Tom Pellereau:
Pretty much always have it open.

Rob Bell:
It's a good point though.

The three of us, by what you've just said, Jono, we don't live that far from the open sea and the open ocean, relatively speaking, right?

But still, the sea doesn't really, I don't give it much thought because I don't live on the coast, where there are communities within the UK, coastal communities where the sea forms a really big part of your day, of your life.

You've got tides and big storms that might come in and it's there.

It's part of every day when you do live at the coastline.

But for us, even that relatively short distance away, it's kind of, yeah, it's not really, I'm not really that conscious of it day to day.

So what is that like for people in double landlocked countries?

Like, do they even mention the sea ever culturally?

Jono Hey:
Yeah, I don't know.

I was trying to think, you know, does our proximity to the ocean, has it affected me during my life or my outlook on the world?

Tom Pellereau:
Jono, it was also an instance, you talked about double landlocked states of America, because the US is an incredibly large country.

And I wonder if, to Rob's question, if people from Utah, Kansas kind of have a very different cultural to California and Florida, I'm sure they probably do.

So maybe that's an easier example for us to kind of understand, or our listeners to understand.

Jono Hey:
Possibly.

I'm glad you brought this one up, Tom.

Thank you.

Because, you know, I remember thinking like, oh, you could, this is like maybe a series, like, you know, there's lots of counties in England, you could have landlocked counties.

But obviously states is probably the clearest example where you could do something, which is not countries, but it's still decent size.

Rob Bell:
So if we got, are there double landlocked states within the United States of America, Jono?

Jono Hey:
Well, yes, yes, and no, but it does depend on your, it depends on your definitions.

Rob Bell:
And so, well, what's your definition?

You set out your definition early on.

Jono Hey:
So my definition was residents of a landlocked state must pass through at least one US state or neighbouring Canadian or Mexican state to reach an ocean.

Rob Bell:
That's consistent with earlier on, that's fine.

I'm buying that.

Jono Hey:
And that includes access to rivers, which might be in principle part of another state's province, right?

Rob Bell:
So listen to how carefully he's defining this.

Jono Hey:
And I say this carefully because...

Tom Pellereau:
A lot of it you're laughing.

You've met Jono's family, right?

And I imagine in quizzes there has to be a lot of small print when you're asking questions.

Jono Hey:
To be really clear.

Tom Pellereau:
Teasing C supplies out, please.

Before Professor Hay starts asking questions.

Jono Hey:
No, Tom, this is important because this is perhaps the sketch I did of my landlocked states which had the most comments of any sketch I've ever done.

Rob Bell:
What?

Because people loved it so much?

Jono Hey:
Well...

Tom Pellereau:
A lot of opinions.

Jono Hey:
It created a lot of discussion, shall we say.

Rob Bell:
That's what we want.

Jono Hey:
That's what we want.

I think a lot of people did like it.

Other people said, I think he's just post this as rage bait, and it's certainly working, which might be another reason why.

Is that a genuine comment?

Rob Bell:
Yeah.

Jono Hey:
And there was something about a lot of comments which had been hidden, and I preferred to keep those hidden, so I didn't look at those.

Rob Bell:
You are a controversial character, Jono Hey.

Jono Hey:
Well, so the reason is, and I encourage you all to go look at it.

It is quite interesting.

You can do it, basically, if you look at the US, you could do a similar sort of thing, and you can have landlocked states.

Some of them are clearly landlocked, and you can have double landlocked, and they have one, according to this definition, one triple landlocked state.

Which I think is really interesting, which is Nebraska.

Tom Pellereau:
Yeah, Nebraska, right in the middle.

Yeah.

Jono Hey:
And some people evidently felt that the reason I'd done this sketch was to make a point about people from Nebraska, which was not the case.

So it's just like, wait, you're saying, you're trying to say something about me in Nebraska.

No, I'm not.

I'm not.

It's just an interesting geographical coincidence.

So America has very large rivers.

So it has the Mississippi, a lot of, you know, states border the Mississippi River, though technically you'd have to travel through parts of other states ownership of the Mississippi River further down, which is why a number of those ended up as landlocked.

And then of course, it has these giant lakes at the top.

And so people understandably, some might call them great lakes, not just giant, but great, might say, well, hang on, how on earth can Illinois be a landlocked state when it's on an enormous lake?

It's got a seashore, an enormous lake, and giant ships come here from the ocean.

Similarly with, similarly with, get out of that one, Philadelphia has a major seaport.

Although in order to get to the sea from Philadelphia, you technically have to pass through a bit of river which belongs to Delaware.

Rob Bell:
He's researched it well, Tommy.

Jono Hey:
The interesting thing about the ones which border the Great Lakes is that Michigan, if you look at the actual state borders, actually just basically sweeps up enormous amounts of the lake itself.

And so, for example, from Wisconsin, you have to go through water which technically is part of Michigan's water even though it's part of one of the lakes, in order to get out into the St.

Lawrence Seaway, which does make it all the way to the Atlantic, but also passes directly through Canada.

So all sorts of reasons why people had comments about this sketch.

Now, I still think it's quite fun, but you might take different sides.

Tom Pellereau:
Yeah, that's very difficult, Jono.

I love the fact you put your head above the parapet to get knocked off, especially from people commenting about questioning the state of Philadelphia.

Jono Hey:
I didn't say the state of Philadelphia.

I said Philadelphia has a large port, and it's, I believe, part of Pennsylvania.

But I didn't say the state of Philadelphia.

Rob Bell:
I would quite confidently say now that either people have switched off or they've definitely got Google Maps up on their phone or their laptop or whatever to follow this.

Jono Hey:
If you'd like my mobile number to call me about it, I'll just give that at the end.

Rob Bell:
I'll include it in the show notes.

Jono Hey:
Anyway, it's quite an interesting sketch, but all of these things depend on definitions.

And you know what?

I think landlocked generally only applies to countries, so it's just kind of a fun exercise to do it through anything else.

Rob Bell:
It is a fun exercise and I enjoyed extrapolating it.

As you did with states, I thought I'd have a little look at counties in the UK as well.

And there are no triple locked and there's only one, maybe two double landlocked counties.

And within France as well, there aren't that many.

There are no triple locked.

I don't think there are any in Europe, triple landlocked kind of territories or departments or counties from my cursory research, which actually goes to show how special Nebraska is.

Jono Hey:
Yeah, absolutely.

A number of people said, don't eat sushi in Nebraska.

And I don't know whether that's true or not.

But, you know, I guess that's one thing you could take.

Tom Pellereau:
It just highlights what a cool country America is and the States and just how complicated it is and a brilliant kind of representation of borders and lines and history and combination of.

Rob Bell:
So much variety.

I just thought there'd be more.

I thought there would be more double landlocked countries.

I thought there would be more triple landlocked, like sub entities of countries, counties, states, departments, whatever it is you want to, whatever it is that they're called in different countries around the world.

Provinces.

Jono Hey:
It probably goes to your point, Tom, which is that access to water and the oceans is just really important.

So generally speaking, things sort of settled out in such ways that places generally tried to get nearer access rather than be fully locked away.

Rob Bell:
I think it's also a little bit of a call back to an episode of the podcast we did not that long ago.

The episode on Antipodes, which is places diametrically opposite on the other side of the world.

And within that episode, we talked a lot about so much of the earth is water.

I think that's what we're, we're concluding here again that there aren't that many double landlocked countries because so much of the earth is water.

Jono Hey:
Yeah, pretty important stuff.

Can I just put out there a couple of the other interesting geographical facts?

Rob Bell:
Please do.

I'm going to include this in AOB.

Go for it.

Jono Hey:
Another couple of the things that have come up in the past in family discussions, it turns out that if you're trying to just keep track of the countries you visited and which ones you have remaining to visit, it's actually quite difficult because countries keep changing.

And so you end up with all these funny technicalities.

You might have visited a place which is not recognized as a country by some, but is by others.

You might have been to a country which has now been split or merged into other ones or has changed names.

Somebody might have been to a part of a country which is now part of a different country, but you weren't there when it was this country, you know.

And actually, it's funny, you'd think that it would be quite straightforward to go, here's a list of countries, can I visit them all, let's say.

But actually, when you start to count them, it got quite tricky.

Rob Bell:
That's good.

And just looking on the map as you were talking there, I think I might have found one like that.

It's Abyei, I may have pronounced that wrong, A-B-Y-E-I.

Abyei is a border town currently in the Abyei area that is disputed by South Sudan and Sudan.

Jono Hey:
Yeah, there you go.

Rob Bell:
So if you were there, what country are you in?

Hard to say.

Jono Hey:
So that was one.

And then one of the ones I really liked, I remember, so I went around was we were an island in the Great Britain.

You can have a lake in an island and then within a lake, you can have another island.

Rob Bell:
That's good.

Jono Hey:
Within that island, you can have another island.

So there are actually some things where you get like, I think, the world's largest island in a lake, on an island in a lake, on an island.

Rob Bell:
Where's that?

Jono Hey:
That one's in Canada, apparently.

Rob Bell:
Great.

Unsurprisingly, big lakes.

Jono Hey:
So when you talked about the countries earlier, Tom, I was thinking about recursive, because there's this concept of recursive countries.

There is also recursive islands.

I've seen it's a bit like island squared.

You're on an island, but you're also on an island, in a lake and an island.

You see how many of them you can go.

Anyway, Canada, I think, yeah, there's millions of islands up, and lakes up in northern Canada has an island in a lake and an island in a lake and an island.

And then there is another one in the Philippines, which is actually an active volcano.

And so there's a small island on a lake on volcano island in a lake on an island in the Philippines.

Yeah, so I don't know, there's just fun places to find, aren't they?

Rob Bell:
I played golf once that had a kind of like showcase 18th green as you're coming into the clubhouse.

That was an island that you had to cross over a bridge to get on and then back off again.

And that golf course happened to be in Ireland.

Jono Hey:
Which is itself an island.

Rob Bell:
Which is itself an island.

Jono Hey:
Yeah, they could have put a little lake on that green.

Rob Bell:
There was a hole in it.

Tom Pellereau:
Or a puddle.

Jono Hey:
A hole in a puddle on a green on a lake in an island.

Yeah, it could be.

Rob Bell:
Any other business?

What would anyone else like to add before we close out this podcast episode?

Jono Hey:
Rob, have you been to the Shetlands?

Rob Bell:
I have been to the Shetland Islands.

Jono Hey:
Yeah, I thought you had.

Because there's one crazy other geographical fact of sorts.

Rob Bell:
For people who don't know where the Shetland Islands are, they are a group of islands very, very far north of the north coast of Scotland.

So I flew to Scotland from London and then I got on another plane and flew for almost as long to get to the Shetland Islands.

Jono Hey:
Yeah, absolutely.

And if there is another set of islands not belonging to the UK called the Faroe Islands, the northwest of the Shetlands, which is even more remote.

And if you put into Google Maps, if you happen to be on the Shetlands and try to go to the Faroe Islands, which on Google Maps doesn't look that far away, and you put driving directions, it will take you 76 hours because it has you traveling all the way back down through the UK, crossing over at the channel, off to Denmark, to the tip of Denmark, and then getting a ferry all the way to the Faroe Islands.

So it's the most ridiculous journey I've ever seen in Google Maps from two neighboring points.

Rob Bell:
That's amazing.

Jono Hey:
It could be another one to find, a ridiculous neighboring point journeys in Google Maps.

Rob Bell:
Well, listen Jono, Tommy, lovely to explore the world's geography with you.

Thank you.

And thank you all for listening.

I'm off to the garage to fix the punctures in my inflatable dinghy because it turns out we're all a lot closer to the sea than I originally thought.

Go well, stay well.

Cheers.

Jono Hey:
Goodbye.

Rob Bell:
All music on this podcast series is provided by the very talented Franc Cinelli.

And you can find many more tracks at franccinelli.com.