Extension To Europe and North Africa
Geological evidence shows that the Appalachian Mountains and the mountains of Western Europe and North Africa are parts of the former Central Pangean Mountains, made when minor supercontinents collided to form the supercontinent Pangaea more than 250 million years ago. With the break-up of Pangaea, sections of the former range remained with the continents as they drifted to their present locations. Inspired by this evidence, efforts are being made to extend the IAT into Western Europe and North Africa.
In April 2010 Greenland became the seventh chapter of the International Appalachian Trail. The route is on the Nussuaq Peninsula near Uummannaq Fjord.
Greenland was followed by Scotland in June, when the West Highland Way became the first IAT trail in Europe.
In October 2010 the IAT expanded further into Europe when nine new chapters joined the IAT at a meeting in Aviemore, Scotland. The meeting was attended by the IAT President and representatives from Coast Alive, the British Geological Survey, Visit Scotland, and Failte Ireland. The new chapters include Norway, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, England, Ireland, Wales, the Faroe Islands, and Iceland.
In 2011 the IAT plans to expand to Germany, Belgium, France, Spain, Portugal and Morocco.
Read more about this topic: International Appalachian Trail
Famous quotes containing the words extension, europe, north and/or africa:
“The desert is a natural extension of the inner silence of the body. If humanity’s language, technology, and buildings are an extension of its constructive faculties, the desert alone is an extension of its capacity for absence, the ideal schema of humanity’s disappearance.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“I believe that the fundamental proposition is that we must recognize that the hostilities in Europe, in Africa, and in Asia are all parts of a single world conflict. We must, consequently, recognize that our interests are menaced both in Europe and in the Far East.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“There are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil.”
—Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947)
“Are you there, Africa with the bulging chest and oblong thigh? Sulking Africa, wrought of iron, in the fire, Africa of the millions of royal slaves, deported Africa, drifting continent, are you there? Slowly you vanish, you withdraw into the past, into the tales of castaways, colonial museums, the works of scholars.”
—Jean Genet (1910–1986)