While many malls, theme parks and stadiums may boast large car parks, most pale in comparison to car storage facilities like the one at the former RAF base in Upper Heyford, Oxfordshire.

After 43 years of service to British and US forces, the base was closed in 1993. Today the runways, taxiways and stands are home to countless¹ thousands of cars and other vehicles. Just off the main runway we can even see a transport truck delivering or removing some vehicles.

Further west, Royal Portbury Dock in Bristol handles well over half a million vehicles every year, with areas dedicated to many of the major car manufacturers.

Many of the vehicles have white plastic covers to protect the bodywork during shipping. And on the quayside cars are being loaded onto a ship for transport.

Although there’s always one person who doesn’t read the memo about colour-coordinated parking, isn’t there?

In the port of Vancouver we find a similar operation, with the north-eastern end of Annacis Island serving as a rail / sea terminal for vehicles.

We see rail cars and a ship with ramps deployed to receive or unload vehicles.

And again, there’s always one…

Where are the largest car parks in your part of the world?

Thanks to Gareth Smart and Fabio Ferrari.

The Jurassic Coast is a 153 km stretch of the English Channel coastline that is world renowned for the incredibly diverse nature of its geology – so much so that in 2001 it became only the second natural landmark in the UK to be granted protection as a World Heritage Site.

The site stretches from Orcombe Point near Exmouth all the way to to Old Harry Rocks near Swanage, and its entire length can be walked on the South West Coast Path, with some wonderful sights to see along the way.

Lulworth Cove

The coastline at Lulworth Cove is concordant, meaning that through movements in the earth’s crust layers of rock have been folded up parallel with the sea.

The entrance to the cove is through a limestone strata, that was widened through erosion by both the sea and glacial melt waters. As the entrance gradually increased in size the softer clay behind was eroded more quickly, giving rise to the spectacular cove we see today.

Just to the west is Stair Hole, which is one of the finest examples of limestone folding in the world, and which lets us see how Lulworth cove would have looked only a few hundred thousand years ago.

Durdle Door

A couple of miles further west is the spectacular limestone arch known as Durdle Door, which has featured in many music videos and several movies.

Here the limestone strata is thinner and has been more severely eroded - and where it is thinnest it has been eroded right through to form Durdle Door. Taking a more general overview of this area we can clearly see the remnants of the original course of the limestone.

Black Ven

Black Ven is one of the largest active landslips in Europe, parts of which continue to get lost to the sea, and it’s famous for the abundance of fossils that are revealed as the cliffs continue to crumble.

The fossil history here is incredibly rich - for example it was in the nearby town of Lyme Regis that the first complete Ichthyosaur fossil was discovered, and I have personally walked out onto the beach at Lyme, cracked open a rock, and found a fossil of my own.

Other history

For Geologists and Paelentologists the Jurassic coast really is a dream come true - we could go on for hours about places like Ballard Cliff, Chesil Beach and the Isle of Portland. We’ve not even touched upon human history here, like when during World War II several sections of the Jurassic Coast became property of the Ministry of War, leading to the abandonment of the village of Tyneham.

While there’s nothing quite like visiting somewhere like this in person, Wikipedia has enough about the Jurassic Coast to keep you clicking around for hours. Also, the official Jurassic Coast website has a wealth of information!

Thanks to many a BBC documentary, Laurence Madill, my high school geography teacher Mr. Woods, and several holidays of my own.

The island of Gotland is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Sweden, and is also home to the Gotland Ring, a motorsports racetrack carved into an old limestone quarry which, once finished, will be the longest racetrack on Earth.

Today about 3km of the Northern loop are currently in use¹, but around 7km will be ready by next year. As well as the track itself, Google’s images let us see the absolutely massive wind turbines that form part of the operator’s vision to be the most environmentally friendly racing facility of its type in the world.

Although it’s far from complete at this stage, these images do also let us begin to see the profile of the Southern Loop, which will apparently be ready for “tarmac installation” next year, but won’t be ready for racing until 2012. As this diagram demonstrates, when finished the two loops will be joined, allowing drivers to race around one complete circuit totalling 28km.²

The land on which the track is being built belongs to a company called Nordkalk, and as the imagery makes quite obvious, it used to be a large limestone quarry. It looks like production of limestone is still in full flow here, judging by the activity going on at the nearby lake, and in fact much of the crushed stone needed for building the circuit was provided by the mining operation.

Gotland Ring does have a Wikipedia page, but it currently reads like a badly translated press release. Perhaps a kindly Swede could do a better job of translating the key points from the official site?

Even a company as all-powerful as Google occasionally needs a helping hand, as the driver of this Street View car in Australia discovered. Give him credit though: despite getting stuck in the mud, he kept his camera running to record the little drama that played out under the hot Outback sun…

Our man got into difficulties on the remote Bourke-Wilcannia road, in north west New South Wales. In the early days of Australian settlement, the town of Bourke came to represent the western edge of civilisation, and the expression “back o’Bourke” is still used to refer to the wilds of the Outback. It’s no surprise, then, that the road conditions can be far from ideal.

After battling bravely through the first flood, the Street View car finally gets bogged down in this patch of mud a few miles short of the small town of Tilpa¹.

Cursing his luck, our driver makes a heroic effort to free himself, spinning the wheels and sending mud flying into the air, but to no avail.

Luckily, help soon arrives, in the form of a vehicle that seems to be coping rather better with the conditions.

The driver of the 4×4² hops out to see what’s happening, even crouching down to have a look at the wheels.

Good job he remembered to bring the tow rope - our man is freed to film another day. Sadly, he switched off the camera soon after he was pulled free, so we can’t see what happened next. Let’s hope he at least bought his knight in shining armour a cold beer.

Thanks to Ken Arnold.

This is the Quaranta, probably one of the least likely cars you’d ever expect to find on Street View - as it’s the only one of its kind in existence!

The “Quaranta” (Italian for “Forty”), is the latest concept from Italdesign Giugiaro who specialise in prototyping next-generation cars, and have designed everything from Bugattis and Ferarris to Volkswagen Golfs and Fiat Unos.

It would hardly be a concept car without an airplane-cockpit style seating arrangement, but this one also has a solar-panelled roof and a hybrid engine. The manufacturer claims that it can do 0-60 in around 4 seconds, with a top speed of 155mph. If this is true, it would make the Quaranta the fastest hybrid car in the world.

Of course the Quaranta isn’t just out for a quick spin - immediately behind it we find a whole truck full of production crew and camera-men! Presumably the truck is about to overtake the car to capture some footage, but we can’t tell what they were filming for.

Perhaps there’s one clue however - does anyone else thinks the driver looks a bit like Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond?

There’s tons of detailed pictures of the Quaranta on Flickr or a video about its design (in Italian) on Youtube.