I set out to find the longest distance for which Google Maps would give Driving Directions. Now that they've shut down the fun "swim the Atlantic" feature, things have changed a bit. It turns out there are multiple "longest drives", because the Google Maps World is partitioned (many countries don't support driving directions), and sometimes ferries are included, and sometimes they are not.
In order of distance, here are the seven longest drives I found. If you can better any of them, please add yours to the comments (please use
to shorten up the giant URLs).
A little bit of a fiddle about got me this far, http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&hl=en&geocode=8463651387605141957,53.871869,-166.451773%3B11838804331881292171,53.327720,-57.473339&saddr=Overland+Dr+%4053.871869,+-166.451773&daddr=53.742214,-56.99707&mra=dme&mrcr=0&mrsp=1&sz=7&sll=53.599025,-59.381104&sspn=3.775156,12.041016&ie=UTF8&ll=56.072035,-88.59375&spn=58.742892,192.65625&z=3
7,360 mi – about 7 days 2 hours
Does it qualify?
This one in Europe is slightly longer, also Norway to Canaries: http://tinyurl.com/3eb3ls, 4 days and 12 hours, 7 205 km.
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The Krim to Canaries is even longer: http://tinyurl.com/4erjxg, 4 days, 14 hours, 7 271 km.
Great fun, this is!
Tweaking Dave's map above, I managed to get up to 7,498 miles, ending in mid-ferry trip in Goose Bay: http://tinyurl.com/57gysn
To the people who posted maps in Europe: You do realize that 7200km in only 4474 miles. So it's not as long as the Alaska-Newfoundland route.
No fiddling,
Unalaska to Cartwright, Labrador:
7354 miles (11835 km)
So, what are the countries with routing data?
- US
- Canada
- Brazil
- All of Europe(?), except:
- Russia
- Turkey
- Japan
- Australia
- Thailand
NOT:
- Mexico
- Central America(?)
- South America(?), except Brazil
- mainland Asia(?), except Thailand
- Russia
- Africa(?)
http://maps.google.com/maps?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&hl=en&tab=wl
Anchorage, Alaska to Homestead, Florida
A little over 5,000 miles
I think it should be obvious that "tweaking" doesn't count. It has to work with a single start point and a single end point.
Otherwise you could wind back and forth until the waypoints maxed out, which is not the point of the exercise.
there used to be a googlemaps cheat that would give you directions "from new york to london" that included among the steps "swim across the atlantic ocean." I suppose they removed it after awhile.
I remember seeing that. That was a damn good idea, I liked it.
47 days, 1 hour ;)
http://tinyurl.com/46n7j7
Why stop at Cartwright, Labrador?
Unalaska to Rigolet, Labrador.
7,436 miles. 7 days, 6 hours.
Australia
Cape Bruny to Nhulunbuy
3 days, 7 hours; 4892 km
http://tinyurl.com/5zq2c7
Not sure why GoogleMaps would take you BELOW the Great Lakes to get from Alaska to Nfld - it should take you ABOVE the lakes as GoogleEarth did with me to cut off about 400 miles and 2 hours. Try Overland Rd, AK to Cape Race, NL in Google Earth.
Dover, Tasmania, Australia
to
Mt Pearl, NL, Canada
I kid you not. Some google techo with a sense of humour must have added the Pacific crossing to the routing maps...
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=mt+pearl&daddr=dover,+tasmania&hl=en&geocode=&mra=ls&sll=-42.916206,148.996582&sspn=5.229549,9.799805&ie=UTF8&z=2
Sorry, that was 29,320km. Forgot to add the figures.
Longest one I can find in India:
Tripura Pradesh Congrees Bhaban, Agartala (Heda chuda)
to
Cape Comorin
4,473 km – about 2 days 21 hours
http://bit.ly/j2Bbt
http://bit.ly/zXIjP
Didn't put too much time into them, but the first (8 days 16 hours) seems longer than everything else on here. Granted, I'm not sure it gave directions for those countries when this was published.
7,360 mi – about 7 days 2 hours
Does it qualify?