As 2007 draws to a close we present our choices for the best posts of the year.

Best Mystery

There were numerous contenders for the most confusing or bizarre images, but our pick is the Mystery Plane Outline, as even the generally accepted answer, that these are small rocks arranged in the shape of a plane, still begs the question: “But why bother?”.

Best personal project

In February we were impressed with one man’s attempt to single-handedly recreate a cruise ship in his front drive.

Lamest World Record

The Largest Wooden ship in the world from April easily wins this prize, due to having a less-than-exciting title and the fact that the specially built ship has never even been in the water!

A special mention also goes to the German towns squabbling over who has the most unintentionally leaning building.

Our Brains Hurt Award

Getting our heads around the Island and Lake recursion from September’s Island Week 2 was almost too much, but I think we get it now…

Best Smallest Thing

We loved the idea of the world’s smallest parks from January, but the world’s smallest municipal park was just too darn small to see from satellite! Fortunately, Google now have a street view shot of it.

Best World’s Most Enlarged Thing

In the last year we’ve featured many, many sights that claim to be the “World’s largest something” but our pick for the Best Largest something is the World’s largest fingerprint.

Best Imagery

Undoubtedly the most amazing images to be found in Google Earth are the African Megaflyover project aerial shots, and the best of these images were highlighted in November’s Google Sightseeing Safari.

Best Blurry Pictures

Some of the aerial images in Google Earth are amazingly high resolution, but not high enough for our tour of miniature parks across the globe, which ended up as a list of blurry blobs that sort-of look like the Eiffel tower.

Best Landart

The ancient Incan geoglyph of a cat is fantastic, and much more intersting and attractive than kfc’s logo stunt.

Most Ignored Warning

A few days after we posted this year’s April fools joke: “Live Satellite Images in Google Earth” we updated the entry with a banner warning users that it was a prank and there are no live images to be seen. Did anyone read that? Of course not! We still get a new message almost every week from someone who fell for the joke and wants to know where the live images are.

Most In-Depth Post

For a long time it had no decent imagery, so during Island Week this year we really went to town on our Easter Island post, and managed to condense 2,000 years of history into a mere 600 words.

Best Large Type

The rooftop message “Welcome to Cleveland” isn’t very interesting at first glance, until you realise that the message is over 400 miles away in Milwaukee!

So that’s our picks of the year, but with over 250 entries in 2007, what were your favourites?

Wishing you all a happy and prosperous 2008 – see you all next year!

Today we’re posting a roundup of the most interesting ways Europe has employed to get canal barges up-and-over stuff. The simplest method is of course a bridge, of which you can see several excellent examples in our previous post, A Canal Across Germany. However sometimes barges need to traverse obstacles that a bridge cannot cross, and Europeland has employed several ingenious solutions to particular geographic problems.

Between Saint-Louis and Arzviller in France, a system was required that enabled the canal to cross the Vosges Mountains. The solution is the Saint-Louis-Arzviller inclined plane, a single structure that replaced 17 locks upon its completion in 1969.

Basically, vessels float into a gigantic bathtub which is then hauled up a 108.7 metre-long ramp at 41°. This vertical change of 44.6 m used to take 8 to 13 hours to traverse, but can now be achieved in just 4 minutes.

Such canal inclined planes are actually not uncommon, but the Saint-Louis-Arzviller example is probably the steepest. In Belgium, engineers have a more traditionally modest angle, but over a much greater distance – the Ronquières inclined plane climbs 68 m vertically, but is nearly 1.5 kilometres long! This time there are two giant bathtubs (actually known as caissons), and the journey takes a much more leisurely 45 minutes to complete.

Seemingly on a roll, Belgian engineers are also responsible for the Strépy-Thieu boat lift – an absolutely monumental machine that dispenses entirely with inclines, and just lifts the barges straight up and down in two counterbalanced caissons¹. The difference between water levels is 73.2 metres, meaning this is officially the world’s tallest boat lift. At least until the new one at the Three Gorges dam is finished anyway…

We already posted the world’s steepest flight of locks, the Caen Hill Flight, so instead here’s the Foxton Locks – a set of ten canal locks consisting of two “staircases” each of five locks. Because the Foxton locks can hold many boats at once, they’ve become a very popular location for Gongoozling – the art of watching activity on UK canals. No, seriously – there’s a Wikipedia page on Gongoozlers and everything.

The best thing about the Foxton locks however, is that we can actually see a barge in one of the locks.

The UK also has two working boat lifts – the Anderton Boat Lift in Cheshire, England, and the awesome Falkirk Wheel in Scotland (which is unfortunately not available on Google Earth or Maps, but Microsoft’s Live Local has a good image of it²).

Although both rely on Archimedes’ Principle, the Falkirk wheel is unique as it is the only rotating boat lift in the world. Barges enter the wheel at the ends of two opposing 15 metre arms, which then rotate through 180° in five and a half minutes, using only the energy it takes to boil 8 kettles!

Read more at Wikipedia about the Saint-Louis-Arzviller inclined plane, the Ronquières inclined plane, the Strépy-Thieu boat lift, the Foxton Locks, the Anderton Boat Lift, and the Falkirk Wheel.

Or, if you’re really interested, “Canal lifts and inclines of the world” by Hans-Joachim Uhlemann seems to be definitive book on this subject.

Thanks to Jel and others.

Crossing the Sacramento River in Redding, California is the sundial bridge which (as you might have guessed) serves the dual purpose of being both a bridge and a sundial!

I previously tried to use North America’s largest sundial to tell the time on Google Earth, which was much more effort than I’d anticipated, and not an exercise I’m keen to repeat.

However, according to “Sundial 101“, telling the time on the sundial bridge should be easier, as “the base plate is titled at an angle equal to the latitude, and the style is perpendicular to the base, which will align it with the earth’s axis”.

Which apparently means that the time can be simply read from the equally spaced markers to the North of the bridge. Each marker represents an hour from 10am until 3pm (I guess that outside these times you’ll just have to look at your watch).

Therefore, I’d say that this photograph was taken at approximately 11.30am!

The sundial bridge was designed by renowned Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava whose work always looks great from above. We’ve previously featured his Saint-Exupéry TGV Terminal and Montjuic Communications Tower. Calatrava’s design for the World Trade Center Transportation Hub in NYC is currently under construction and is expected to be completed by 2008.

More info on the bridge from Tutle Bay Exploration Park and CNet News and you may also enjoy Felippo’s extensive sundial collection.

Thanks to otiica on the Google Earth forum & Anthony Ochoa

Zanesville in Ohio claims that their Y-bridge is “the only Y-shaped bridge in the world!”

Now in its fifth incarnation, the bridge spans the Licking river to the West and the Muskingum river to the East. Allegedly this makes the Y-bridge the only place in the US where you can cross a bridge but stay on the same side of the river.

Hang on, Ohio actually have another Y-bridge! Not too far from Zanesville, the Akron Y-bridge is where two roads come together to share a bridge. Officially titled the “All-American Bridge”, its other unofficial title is sadly the “Suicide Bridge”.

Uh, hang on again. The “Galena Y-bridge” in Galena, Missouri has been closed to vehicles since 1986 (when a new bridge was created to the North), but nevertheless it’s still a Y-shaped bridge. In this case the Y-shape was created to allow traffic heading East across the bridge to go either North or South, as heading straight on would involve driving straight into the side of a mountain…

More info on the Y-bridges in Galena, Akron and Zanesville.

Thanks: onTypes

Germany has an extensive canal system, made up in part by the Mittellandkanal (Midland Canal), which helps form an important industrial shipping route from the west of the country, all the way to Poland.

In Minden the Mittellandkanal engages in this verging-on-the-ridiculously-complex aquatic interchange where the canal crosses the Weser River. There’s usually a 13 metre height difference between the river and the canal, so locks like this one (ground level photo) are needed to get vessels up and down.

To the east, the Mittellandkanal crosses a small river and a road in Hanover, primarily to pass right by this Volkswagen factory to the north.

Further east at Magdeburg the Rothensee boat lift (ground level photo) was originally intended as a minor connection between the Mittellandkanal and the River Elbe, with an aquaduct and another boat lift forming a connection with the Elbe-Havel Canal.

Due to WWII however, the rest of the project was never completed, and for 60 years the Rothensee lift instead lowered all the aquatic traffic from the West German industrial centres onto the Elbe on their way to West Berlin.

In 2003, a proper connection to the Elbe-Havel Canal was finally completed, putting an end to the traditional 12 km detour. The 918 metre long Magdeburg Water Bridge is the longest aqueduct in Europe, and as you can see in this photo, it’s absolutely enormous! 690 metres of the bridge are over land, and the waterway it carries is 34 metres wide and 4.25 metres deep.

You can read more about the Mittellandkanal, the Rothensee boat lift and the Magdeburg Water Bridge at Wikipedia.

Thanks to Nick and Glenn.