A Pole of Inaccessibility is the location in a geographical area that is the furthest away from all its borders. Those borders could be physical, such as the sea, or political, such as a State boundary.

The definition of Pole of Inaccessibility (PIA) in this respect relates only to distance and not to difficulty in getting to that location – no allowance is being made for difficult terrain slowing a journey from the border to the PIA. It is also not necessarily the geographical centre of the same area, which is usually taken to be the Centre of Gravity.

Continental Poles of Inaccessibility

Discussion on Poles of Inaccessibility has traditionally been limited to Continental Poles, relating to the largest land masses on the Earth:

• North America
• South America
• Eurasia
• Africa
• Australasia
• Antarctica
• Arctic

The location of these points are well documented, even if the exact location is disputed or has more than one possibility. Many have already been visited by PIA explorers or even ‘claimed’ such as the Russian statue erected at the PIA in Antarctica.

But wait, there’s more…

Points of Inaccessibility

Inaccessibility.net is extending the thinking behind locating the poles and applying it to any area that has borders.  To distinguish them from the traditional ‘poles’ we are calling them Points of Inaccessibility. For explorers and enthusiasts this opens up a whole range of possibilities such as the most inaccessible locations in individual countries, states or even counties.

Across this site you’ll find the locations of multiple Points of Inaccessibility that you might like to visit. The coordinates for these points have been calculated, in most cases, to within a metre or so.

This blog documents:

• Our journeys to the Poles and Points,
• What we found there, and
• Who we met along the way.

Hopefully you’ll find it interesting and inspire your own travels.

Why don’t you visit a PIA? It’s far more interesting than just visiting the usual “attractions”.