As well as being a holiday here in the UK, today is Star Wars Day (yes, simply because of the bad pun I’m afraid). So here’s a roundup of some Star Wars related sights!

First up is Star Wars Path near Atlanta, Georgia. There’s a road sign too, but it isn’t really legible on Street View. What I don’t know however, is how it got its name?

In the original Star Wars movie the spaceport of Mos Eisley was on the planet Tatooine, but in fact it was filmed here at Matmata in Tunisia. Some interior scenes were even filmed in the underground homes of the people who live here, who these days make good money from charging tourists to take pictures.

Last week on Twitter we just happened to see these rather unconvincing-looking portraits of some Star Wars characters, that form part of an otherwise impressive piece of French graffiti.

Does anyone know of other Star Wars themed sights that we can visit today?

Thanks to Keir Clarke and Virtual Globe Trotting.

Headington, a suburb of the famous university city of Oxford, is the only known habitat of the aerial shark, a rare but fearsome predator that dives on its unsuspecting victims from heights of over a quarter of a mile. Incredibly, Google’s Street View car has managed to capture the aftermath of a horrific aerial shark attack!

Okay, we made that up. This 25ft-long shark is actually made out of fibreglass¹, and was thrust through the roof of number 2 New High Street in 1986 in the name of art. Bill Heine, who commissioned the sculpture and still owns the house, says he did it “to express someone feeling totally impotent and ripping a hole in their roof out of a sense of impotence and anger and desperation… It is saying something about CND, nuclear power, Chernobyl and Nagasaki.”

The shark has since become a local landmark, but it nearly didn’t survive: soon after it was erected, Oxford City Council ruled that putting a shark through your roof without planning permission simply wouldn’t do, and ordered it to be taken down. Bill appealed, and in a rare show of common sense, the government decided it could stay².

Unfortunately, when the Street View image was captured, the house was covered in scaffolding. To see it in all its glory, go to the official shark site.

Thanks to Cyan and Julian.

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?