A month or so ago I came across Tripline. I thought it looked a great resource so I signed up for an account. I am fascinated by cartography and my passion for it was nurtured by an outstanding Geography teacher when I was at the Alun School, Mold (in the 1960s) and by later access to the wonderful work of Alfred Wainwright‘s Pictorial Guides to the Lakeland Fells.
I did not have an opportunity to use Tripline until my trip to Japan. It struck me as a great opportunity to share a journey with colleagues who may travel from the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) in Canberra to the Japanese Institute of Sports Sciences (JISS) in Tokyo (or vice versa).
Tripline is:
a way for you to tell a story by putting places on a map. That’s a very human activity that has been happening for thousands of years. It’s also a way for you to easily answer those questions we hear so often: Where are you guys going? When are you leaving? How was the trip? What did you do? – the kind of questions that photos don’t answer. And just like in the movies, the Tripline player gives you an animated line moving across the map with a soundtrack. That’s appropriate, because our journeys are our own epic tales of discovery and adventure.
I found Tripline a very intuitive tool to use. I did make one significant mistake at the outset … I clicked on the bin icon rather than the tablet icon and lost three venues! It is helpful to know where you are too. I was searching for some of the locations on the Google Japan homepage and this proved interesting the nearer I got to the JISS. This is 本蓮沼駅(東京 the nearest station (Motohasunuma) to JISS.
This is a link to the trip I created with Tripline. The trip plays in front of your eyes with the controls on the right of the screen when you visit the trip on the Tripline site!
I think that Tripline will be a great resource for coaches, athletes and parents making new journeys that others have made already. As I was plotting my trip I was thinking I should have taken photographs too. In new places it is good to know which entrance of a station to use. At airports I think it will be a great resource for those moments when well-signposted routes suddenly disappear.
We will need good guides to share routes.
Photo Credit
Hogwill Fells and River Lune