It’s Island Week 3 here at GSS, which means we’ll mostly be posting about Islands. It’ll probably last about a week.

This is what used to be the island of Jordsand in the Wadden Sea, just off the coast of Denmark, and east of the German island of Sylt.

Once upon a time it may have connected to both the mainland and Sylt, but by 1873 it was down just 18.4 hectares in size. Attempts to protect the island were made during the 1970s but recurring floods continued to reduce its area and, during the winter of 1998, the little island was finally submerged for good.

Interestingly, the low resolution image used on Google Maps for the more zoomed-out views still shows some small sections of land protruding from the water.

Thanks to Lars Dybdahl.

It’s Island Week 3 here at GSS, which means we’ll mostly be posting about Islands. It’ll probably last about a week.

The island of Tristan da Cunha and its surrounding archipelago are located in the southern Atlantic ocean, 2816 km from the nearest continent, making it the most remote island in the world!

Tristan da Cunha is a dependency of the British overseas territory Saint Helena, and also a live volcanic island. The main settlement, “Edinburgh of the Seven Seas“¹, had to be temporarily abandoned in 1961 due the volcano erupting.

As Edinburgh of the Seven Seas is 2,400 km from the main settlement on Saint Helena, it chalks up an additional record of the “most remote permanent settlement in the world”.

The other islands in the archipelago include Gough Island, which has a temporary population of 6 South Africans who work at the small weather station…

… and the mysterious sounding Inaccessible Island. Officially uninhabited (presumably for obvious reasons), Inaccessible Island also appears to be inaccessible to high-resolution photography satellites (unlike the rest of the archipelago).

More info on Tristan da Cunha, Edinburgh of the Seven Seas and Saint Helena can be found at Wikipedia.

Thanks to Nico, Tom and Matt.

It’s Island Week 3 here at GSS, which means we’ll mostly be posting about Islands. It’ll probably last about a week.

Lindisfarne is a tidal island, off the north-east coast of England, which thanks to having been home to a monastery since the 7th century AD, is also known as Holy Island.

The causeway that connects Lindisfarne to the mainland is flooded twice a day by the tide (you can see the tidemark on this section of the road), so drivers must be careful about when they start to cross. Refuge places are provided for the cars should they become stranded by quickly rising water.

Before the advent of cars those wishing to reach the monastery would have had to cross the sands on foot at low tide. Known as Pilgrim’s Way, we can see the markers that still define that path today, as well as small refuge boxes for those who choose a foolish time to attempt the walk.

Here’s the second refuge box on the Pilgrim’s Way, but following the markers along there are no people to be seen, probably because a large section of the path is under water.

Where the Pilgrim’s way finally meets land we find a nice modern-day maze of, er… something, and just south of here we finally come across the ancient ruins of the island’s monastery.

To the east of the monastery, we can also see the small Lindisfarne Castle and the old castle limekilns, which are in the care of the National Trust and open to visitors.

Elsewhere on the island there are monuments, some spectacular sections of coastline, lots of sand, and there’s even a lake for all you recursion junkies.

There’s more about the long history of Lindisfarne at Wikipedia, or have a look at this PDF of the island’s sights.

See also the previously featured Mont Saint Michel tidal island.

Especially for Spamboy.

It’s Island Week 3 here at GSS, which means we’ll mostly be posting about Islands. For about a week.

Schiermonnikoog is a small island off the coast of the Netherlands, that only 758 years ago was actually 2 kilometres north of its current location, and a completely different shape to boot! A combination of current, tides and wind have actually moved this island at the astonishing rate of around 2.64 metres per year.

The island’s name, “Schiermonnikoog” translates into English as “Island of the grey monks” and was named for the colour of the robes of the Cistercian monks who first owned this tiny piece of land. Today it stands as a municipality in its own right, and with only around one thousand inhabitants, is the least densely populated municipality in the Netherlands.

See our April 2008 post on Sea Reclamation for more on coastal erosion.

Thanks to Arjan.

On display outside a French High School, there’s what is claimed to be the world’s largest key.

The key measures around 10.5 metres long, although may have lost its title earlier this year when Bethlehem claimed the crown¹.

It’s still impressive, especially in the fact that it’s completely useless.

Not as large, but much more mysterious, is a 8.5m key lying around a carpark in Denver.

This key doesn’t appear on Live Search Maps² or the Google Street View imagery, so it was either dropped by a careless giant, or isn’t a key at all. So what is it?

Thanks to Felippo & dda.

Tinsley Viaduct is a two-tier road bridge in Sheffield, England; the first of its kind in the UK. It carries the M1 motorway over a 1033 metre section of the Don Valley, and is one of Sheffield’s most prominent landmarks. Sadly there’s not much to see from our viewpoint.

Fortunately for us however, the Tinsley Viaduct runs right past the Tinsley Towers, a fantastic pair of defunct cooling towers. Due to their extremely close proximity to the viaduct, they were left standing when the power plant they served was demolished in the 70s.

As it happens, “extremely close” is a bit of an understatement - the nearest tower stands only 12 metres from the M1!

Actually, “stood” is the correct term I’m afraid.

Following years of strengthening work to the viaduct (and presumably advances in demolition technology), the towers were finally brought down¹ in the early hours of Sunday the 24th August. You can watch a video of the spectacular destruction of the towers over at the BBC.

Thanks to Radio 2 and the ever informative Jonathan Rawle.

Sorry folks, no post today.

However, many of you may be unaware that we operate a “backchannel” of sorts over at Twitter, where as well as a feed of all the posts from the main site, we also post some interesting stuff that doesn’t make it on here. So for the many people that don’t read our Twitter page, here the best links that you missed!

• There’s a large police turnout in Providence, RI.
• Apparently, this Australian Graffiti artiste reckons that “TRENT IS BENT“. I wonder what Trent has to say about that?
• French resident captured taking a dump in the street, eew!
• This creepy looking house is covered in stuffed toys.
• The Street View car gets a flat tyre repaired in the tiny town of Paraburdoo, Western Australia.
• Ford Model T driving down the street.
• Wild antelope on Google Street view!
• Flickr: Google Street View car gets a ticket.

If you’d like more like this, subscribe to our twitter feed!

The town of Brummen in The Netherlands is perhaps the last place you would expect to find a secret government conspiracy in action, but any other explanation would be naïve: Google have obviously been forced to disguise the structure with the help of the clone tool, and the repeated use of a beige trees produces some rather amateur results:

However, when you look at it in the rival Live Maps service, you can see nothing amiss, apart from a half constructed golf course to the side - not the most secretive fortification in my eyes. When compared side by side, the woods seem to be wider and there is definitely a suspicious change in water colour:

In reality, the most plausible suggestion would appear to be an humble technician trying to clear up a mess left by an imagery artifact or cloud, but my gut knows that it is something to do with the renegade Staten-Generaal. The bloggers over at ‘Stinky Journalism‘ (seriously) have been to Google about this, and apparently they are investigating the anomaly.

We’re aware that there seems to be an anomaly in our imagery and are working to determine what happened.

Of course, this isn’t the first time Google has taken part in a bit of photoshop trickery, as we saw last year when they put on a sham aerial display.

Thanks: PhotoshopDisasters and StinkyJournalism.org