Where the North Sea meets the Baltic Sea¹, there’s Grenen²; a spectacularly unspectacular sandbank at the northern end of Jutland, the continental part of Denmark.

The form and position of the sandbank’s tip can vary considerably over short periods of time, when waves³ and currents remove or deposit sand.

On the long term however, Grenen is growing by almost a kilometre (roughly half a mile) per century, slowly extending towards the north east. A closer look at the aerial picture shows distinct stripes in the landscape: successive layers of silt and sand that have accumulated over time.

Of great importance is the 46m (150ft) high lighthouse close to the tip.

Despite the increasing use of advanced navigational systems, the lighthouse is still crucial to the safe passage of more than 100,000 ships that pass Grenen every year.

Due to its prominent position in between seas, the location has also been of great military interest for many years. What remains today are several very sturdy concrete fortifications and artillery positions built by the Germans during World War II.

These structures are part of the huge Atlantic Wall project, a chain of coastal defences built by the German Third Reich that runs from southern France to the northern end of Norway. The Wall was never completely finished, and save its French parts never saw much use.

A little further to the south lies the “Tilsandede Kirke“, or “silted up church“. Built around the 12th century, it was the region’s most important church.

However, beginning in the 16th century, it had to regularly be dug out of the sand that amassed around it, and was finally given up in 1795. Its main building was torn down to reuse the building materials, while the church’s tower remains as a historical site.

Grenen today is a popular leisure destination⁴ and a nature reserve, protecting the region’s distinct vegetation including several kinds of orchids. It is also a popular site for bird spotters looking for passing eagles, ospreys, cranes, storks and ernes, amongst many others.

We featured the Greenwich meridian two years ago on Google Sightseeing, so it’s about time we had a closer look at the other global zero: the equator.

Although it is more than 40,000km long, there are surprisingly few towns along the line – much of its length consists of ocean, and on land it crosses large expanses of tropical rainforest.

We start our journey, appropriately enough, in the country named after its location: Ecuador. Perhaps the best known monument marking the equator is Mitad del Mundo (Middle of the World), just outside the capital, Quito. These days, GPS-laden tourists are often alarmed to find that the true zero line appears to be 240 metres north of the line on the ground.

It’s all a question of which map datum¹ you use: The Global Positioning System, along with most online maps, uses the WGS84 datum. So, in the same way that the Greenwich meridian is 100 metres or so away from GPS 0° longitude, the GPS equator (shown in red below) is somewhat north of the Mitad del Mundo line (in blue).

Just to the northeast of the offical Mitad del Mundo monument is a small private museum called Inti-Ñan, which claims to be on the “real” equator. It is, but only on an older datum called SAD69 (shown in yellow). Your GPS won’t read zero until you walk into the main road outside.

Heading eastwards through Ecuador, we soon come to the highest point on the equator, and the only place on the line with permanent snow cover: Volcán Cayambe. The summit, just inside the northern hemisphere, is 5,790 metres above sea level; the highest point on the equator itself is some 1,100 metres lower.

On the other side of South America, in the city of Macapá in Brazil, we find a football² stadium supposedly built right on the equator, with one half of the pitch in each hemisphere. This is the Estádio Milton Corrêa, better known as the Zerão (”Big Zero”), and it’s only slightly marred by the fact that the WGS84 equator actually runs just past the southern end of the pitch. A little way to the east, along Avenida Equatorial, is a monument known as Marco Zero.

Next we cross the Atlantic to Africa. A popular tourist stop in Kenya is this layby on the outskirts of Nanyuki, where a sign (arrowed) marks the location of the equator. In this case it’s pretty accurate, being just 20 metres or so south of the WGS84 line. You can usually find enterprising locals here willing, for a few shillings, to “demonstrate” how water flows down the plughole in opposite directions either side of the line. However, it’s an urban myth and the demonstration is all down to sleight of hand.

Our last location is in Indonesia, in Pontianak on the island of Borneo. Built in 1990, the Equator Monument is a replica of the marker first erected in the 1920s by Dutch surveyors. It’s five times the size of the original, but again it’s disappointing to note that it is 120 metres too far north, according to GPS.

One final Google oddity – if you search for the location “0,0″, then as you’d expect you get a placemark at the intersection of the equator and the Greenwich meridian, off the coast of west Africa. What’s more unexpected is the address that is given: 23208 Glenbrook St, St Clair Shores, Michigan. Is this unassuming neighbourhood the real centre of the universe?

It’s been a while since we’ve posted here about updated images in Google Earth and Maps, but Google have been steadily rolling out new updates every few months, usually with a short quiz relating to the new locations.

However, today’s announcement is a little different as they’ve promised to not only increase the frequency of updates¹, but also provide exhaustive detail, via a KML file, of exactly which areas have been added or updated. This is great news for Google Sightseeing, as we’re always looking for new sights to feature.

Updated locations are highlighted in red

The Google Earth team have also challenged you to find the best sights on the new imagery and share them on twitter using the #GearthIMG hashtag. We’ve already posted a couple, and will keep an eye on the findings.

Remember, you can also follow us on Twitter to keep up with the latest Google Earth, Maps, and #streetview posts.

Nestled in the Lancashire countryside, just to the south of Ormskirk, is the small town of Argleton. Or so Google would have us believe.

Zooming in closer reveals that Argleton isn’t exactly a bustling metropolis. In fact it looks suspiciously like a couple of fields.

Roy Bayfield of Ormskirk was so intrigued by the mystery that he walked to the centre of Argleton just to check that there was definitely nothing there. There really wasn’t.

So where has Argleton come from? Some of Aughton’s 8,300 residents believe that it’s the result of a simple mispronunciation, but conspiracists have suggested another theory.

The map data used here comes from Tele Atlas, and it has long been known that cartographers sometimes alter their maps as a way of protecting their intellectual copyrights. Usually this takes the form of Trap Streets (which are designed to “trap” people who steal the data, as they copy the unique mistakes along with everything else), however in this case, is it possible that Tele Atlas has invented an entire town?

In the past the inclusion of a fake town in a map would have likely caused no harm, but in the age of automatic content generation, Argleton was building up a fair bit of fake history.¹ Simply by having been declared to exist, automatic listings were being generated for it, meaning that is someone were to look it up online, they would believe it to be a lively town with jobs, hotels and schools.

Of course one final possibility remains – that Argleton is simply a mistake. Consider the fact that just a few kilometres to the north, Google has quite brilliantly renamed a local cul-de-sac to Dummy 1325.

Thanks to Google Maps Mania for alerting us to this one, which was originally posted by Mike Nolan at the Edge Hill University.

Santiago Calatrava is a renowned Spanish architect whose work we’ve admired in the past on Google Sightseeing. We’re going to take a more in-depth look at his innovative work in two areas, beginning today with bridges.

One of Calatrava’s earliest bridge commissions helped cement his international reputation for civic engineering, the Bac de Roda bridge in Barcelona. Like the vast majority of his work, the structure is entirely white.

Part of the city’s pre-Olympic development, the bridge incorporates steel cables, a method used in many of Calatrava’s subsequent designs, including the Puente del Alamillo in Seville, which features a 142m tall mast.

Similar in design to the previously featured Sundial Bridge, the Puente del Alamillo was part of Seville’s preparations for Expo ‘92.

In Buenos Aires the 100m long Puente de la Mujer uses the same technique, but the mast is angled forward rather than backwards. In this case, the mast also supports a section of bridge that pivots through 90 degrees to allow boat traffic to pass, coming to rest at the stabilising pylon visible in the river to the south.

While Calvatara’s bridges are generally well received and establish themselves as symbols of the communities where they are built, there have been some exceptions. In Bilbao, the Zubizuri has met with opposition on several fronts.

The Zubizuri’s deck includes glass bricks which apparently break easily and become very slippery in the rain, additionally, the placement of the bridge on the river edge (rather than the elevated city street) made it somewhat impractical to actually use, so the city had to build a connecting walkway – the curved structure to the left of the bridge. Calatrava actually felt this was detrimental to his creation, and amazingly, won €30,000 through his legal action.

Furthermore, Calatrava’s Ponte della Costituzione in Venice – shown as under construction on Google Maps, but actually completed a year ago – has also met with controversy for being too expensive, inaccessible to anyone unable to traverse its many steps, and for being too close to one of the city’s classic bridges across the Grand Canal.

Named for one of Dublin’s most famous writers¹, the James Joyce bridge has had a better reception from locals, perhaps because the design mirrors many of the other arched bridges across the Liffey. However like the Zubizuri, the James Joyce has a glass block walkway² – though it’s possible that the frosted finish to the glass makes it safer to traverse in Irish weather!

Another of Calatrava’s bridges, named for another writer – Samuel Beckett – is under construction further east. It will be a swing bridge very similar to Puente de la Mujer.

Finally, the spectacular Chords Bridge in Jerusalem is one of Calatrava’s more notable recent bridge designs, but unfortunately it’s not yet visible on Google Maps.

We’ll continue this examination of Calatrava’s work in a later post, looking at some of his most famous and notable buildings.

Thanks to Redder Zooming.