This year’s Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts drew 177,000 party people to deepest Somerset, reaffirming Glastonbury’s position as the largest greenfield music and performing arts festival in the world.

Some went for the music. Some went for the mud. A few might even have gone for Bruce Springsteen - but no doubt a good (if slightly damp) time was had by all.

Despite its name, the festival is not actually held in Glastonbury, but at Worthy Farm in the village of Pilton, some six miles to the east.¹ Google’s aerial photos clearly weren’t taken at the end of June, as they reveal a remarkably unsullied rural scene - the site is still a working dairy farm. The famous Pyramid Stage is missing, but the foundations (and surrounding dried mud) can clearly be seen, as can the electricity pylons that cross the site.

Of the second stage (known, with a great deal of imagination, as the Other Stage), there is no sign at all - it is situated here, in a peaceful-looking field. (If you squint a bit, perhaps you can just make out a vague dark semicircular area.)

Near the southern edge of the site, you can see the stone circle, a favourite hippy hangout that was built for the festival by a druid, no less.

“Glasto” will be 40 years old next year, but it remains a brief annual blip of madness in the Worthy Farm routine. Once the music is over, the stages dismantled, the last hungover revellers departed and the vast quantities of rubbish cleaned up, Pilton’s cows can once again live in peace - until next time.

It’s interesting to compare this map of this year’s festival site to the aerial photos, so you can see what happened where.

Thanks to Barry.

Ah, the English summer: Pimm’s on the lawn, sandcastles on the beach, socks inside sandals, and the gentle sound of leather on willow. Yes, along with tennis, the nation’s sporting thoughts at this time of year turn to cricket - and, this month, to the Twenty20 World Cup.

Cricket mystifies many people from outside the former British Empire¹. Quite apart from its arcane terminology (googlies and doosras; backward short leg and silly mid off), some struggle to see the appeal of a game where you can play for five days and still end up with a draw.

In recent years though, a new and - dare we say it? - more exciting form of the game has become increasingly popular. In Twenty20 cricket, as the name suggests, each side bats for only 20 overs² and essentially just tries to slog the ball for as many runs as possible. Purists complain that this takes all the finesse out of the game and could spell the death of Test cricket³, but many fans are just happy to be able to watch a complete match without having to take a week off work…

2009’s Twenty20 World Cup, the second in the event’s history⁴, is being contested by 12 nations at three venues in England, two of which are in London. First up is Lord’s, where the final will be held on June 21.

Often called “the home of cricket”, this is the headquarters of the world’s oldest cricket club, the MCC⁵. The current location, which dates from 1814, is actually the third incarnation. Thomas Lord built his first ground in the area in 1787, near the site of present-day Dorset Square, then a second which had to be abandoned due to the building of the Regent’s Canal.

It looks as if there was a match being played on the day the Street View car drove past Lord’s, judging by the marshals and crowds. Let’s hope those big black clouds went away!

We head south of the River Thames for our next venue: The Oval, or, to give it its proper corporate-sponsored name, The Brit Insurance Oval.

This ground dates from 1845 and in 1880 became the first venue in England to hold a Test match (England v Australia). Two years later, after Australia beat the home nation at The Oval, a mock newspaper obituary mourned the death of English cricket, stating “the body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia”; to this day the two nations compete for The Ashes.

The Oval hasn’t always hosted cricket though: the first ever international football⁶ match took place here in 1870 (England v Scotland), and all but one of the first 20 FA Cup finals were held here. Despite being in the London Borough of Lambeth, The Oval is the home ground of Surrey County Cricket Club.

Street View doesn’t show too much of the ground itself, but one of the large gasometers to the north, a well-known landmark associated with the venue, is clearly visible.

The last of our three locations is a hundred miles or so to the north, in Nottingham. Trent Bridge is the home of Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club and takes its name, unsurprisingly, from the adjacent bridge which carries the main London road over the River Trent.

Cricket has been played on the site since the 1830s, when Nottinghamshire’s club captain married the landlady of the Trent Bridge Inn, and set up a ground in the meadow behind it. The impressive pavilion was built in 1886 and served as a military hospital during the first world war. It can be seen in Street View, but only end-on.

Also on view are the smart new stands and floodlights that were completed last year. A rather less lovely landmark of the ground is the ugly office block that was built after a corner of the ground was sold off in the 1960s.

If you haven’t learned enough about cricket yet, you can read more about Lord’s, The Oval and Trent Bridge at Cricinfo.

This giant shiny artwork in Chicago’s Millennium Park is officially called “Cloud Gate” but, as with most public art, everyone knows it by a much more obvious nickname - in this case “The bean“.

The work of British artist Anish Kapoor, the $23 million bean is constructed from solid stainless steel panels that reflect Chicago in all manner of warping shapes, making it a fantastic way to take brilliantly-bizarre self portraits.

The bean is a massive tourist attraction, and there are some 30,000 photos on Flickr, including a few I took when we visited Chicago in 2006.

Kapoor is also responsible for the Sky Mirror at Nottingham Playhouse. A similarly-shiny object, this time he built a concave mirror which directs light from above onto the courtyard.

Unfortunately it’s difficult to see from the aerial shot, but we can just see two sparks of reflection. You can see ground level pictures of the mirror on Flickr.

The Danish town of Fredericia is under attack!

A 35 metre tall giant is (admittedly very slowly), clawing his way out of the earth to wreak havoc upon the defenceless surface-dwelling Danes. So far the terrifying creature has only managed to completely free his hands, but he’s threatening to break the rest of himself through at any moment.

Which means that we have the unique opportunity to present a very special award; this is, without doubt, quite probably the world’s largest arse!

While we’re unclear whether or not visitors may take a picnic onto the grass, we’re sure that the giant’s giant-butt-crack would afford a reasonable amount of shelter from the wind if someone chose to attempt such a thing…

This isn’t the only example of giants breaking free from their underground lairs - over in Washington D.C. another giant is clawing his way out of the ground, watched by a crowd of onlookers (Wikipedia).

Given that he’s managed to expose a little more of himself, perhaps we should be grateful that he chose to emerge face first…

Thanks to bjarnebf, Simon and Jimbo.

Disaster has struck at a house in the small town of Gibson, Arkansas, as a home is engulfed in flames. There are several fire engines on the scene, but it’s probably too late to save the building since the flames are clearly visible inside the walls and on the roof.

Fire-fighters are perched on top of one of the engines, and look to be spraying water at the other side of the house from where the flames are, so it could be that they are trying to save another building from catching fire - perhaps this unfinished house just behind it?

The Street View car looks to have gone to a lot of effort to capture the fire - despite being stopped in its tracks by various roadblocks, it still manages to cover most of the roads - even when a fire engine blocks its path!

From the way the pictures were taken, it looks like the car has had to continually manoeuvre to avoid getting in the way of the emergency services, or driving on the fire hose that stretches all the way down the street.

Unfortunately I could find no reference to the fire on the web, but sincerely hope that nobody was harmed by it.

Thanks: Flashmojo (who claims he can actually be seen looking at the fire over a nearby fence!)