THEY are called confluence hunters and they are flocking to an empty field near you.

Armed with the latest satellite technology, internet enthusiasts are creating a unique snapshot of the world.

One young American’s idea to take a photograph at every “confluence point”, where whole degrees of latitude intersect with longitude, has snowballed into an internet craze that has spread to 121 countries.

In the past, explorers would discover land and stick it on a map. Today’s adventurers aim to travel to 16,146 points on a map of the world and find out what lies there.

From Albania to Zimbabwe, hunters use hand-held global positioning system units to locate confluence points, posting digital pictures on the internet. Their snapshots, a random sample of the world, create a surprising picture: a still unspoilt globe of open spaces, mountains, forests and empty fields.

Gordon Spence, 44, a mortgage consultant from Northamptonshire, drags his children to dozens of remote and windblown spots around Britain where longitudes and latitudes meet.

“The perception you get is that Britain has been concreted over but it certainly hasn’t,” he said. “There is some wonderful countryside still to be seen off the beaten track.”

From a cowshed near Petersfield in Hampshire (51°00’N, 1°00’W to be exact) to the empty sweep of the Yorkshire moors north of Skipton, Britain’s confluence points depict a green and pleasant land. There is little sign of sprawling housing estates, towering electricity pylons or concrete flyovers.

Mr Spence’s favourite confluence point is the country’s biggest munitions dump near Carlisle. It took him six months to get permission to enter a restricted area within the MoD property and use his handheld GPS unit to locate and record the spot.

“It is great to get out in the fresh air and see things you would never come across in your normal life,” Mr Spence said. “My wife thinks I’m a bit eccentric but it’s a harmless hobby. I quite often drag the kids along. They think: ‘What are we doing this for?’ but they enjoy seeing their pictures up on the net.”

Confluence hunting was invented by Alex Jarrett, an American computer programmer, who decided to test out his new global positioning system unit by getting on his bike and riding the ten miles from his home in New Hampshire to pinpoint where exactly the latitudinal line 43°00’N met the longitudinal line 72°00’W. He said he liked the idea of visiting a random location represented by a round number, and created a website for the pictures he took. His idea was soon taken up by others.

Peter Doggett, 37, an Australian, came to Europe four years ago and began bagging confluence points, finding it a good way to get off the more established tourist trail and discover the British countryside.

But the mostly male gadget-handy hunters admit the “geek” factor is high as they track down new undiscovered confluence points. Landowners are often baffled when hunters knock on their door and ask to traipse across an empty wheatfield.

“It has a bit of a trainspotter aspect to it,” Mr Doggett said. “People’s normal reaction is: ‘You’re doing what?’ and ‘Why?’ “When you go to someone’s farmhouse and ask their permission to go out on their land and take a whole lot of pictures of nothing it is quite comical hearing yourself explain what exactly you are trying to do. Some people are enthusiastic, others think you are a nut.”

One of the project’s European co-ordinators, Terje Mathisen, 46, a computer scientist from Oslo, admitted: “I’m a geek and I like gadgets such as digital cameras and GPS.”

According to Mr Mathisen, there is a healthy element of competition between hunters as they battle to bag any unrecorded spot. He said he was disappointed to learn that every confluence point in Sweden had already been recorded while his country, Norway, still had dozens to log.

The current confluence champion is a merchant seaman called Peter Moselberger, known to hunters as Captain Peter. The eccentric Sicilian directs his ship towards confluence points and has bagged 91, from Russia to Brazil.

There are 64,442 latitude and longitude degree intersections in the world. After eliminating those on water and those near the poles, where they are very close to each other, the hunters settled on 16,146 suitable targets on or in sight of land.

Every point in Germany and Austria has been recorded, Burkina Faso is surprisingly well-documented, and American doctors visiting Iraq recorded the first point in the country in July. But there is still plenty of work for the hunters to do: some 13,625 confluence spots are yet to be logged.

Virgin territories, with no points mapped by the hunters, include Afghanistan, Iran, Paraguay, Fiji and the Seychelles.

Potential recruits to the cause can visit the website at www.confluence.org

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