When Google were recording their recently launched UK and Netherlands Street View imagery, a small team of crack-commandos cosplayers were tasked with leaving behind some highly recognisable British icons for the public to find.

The most famous of these was of course the widely publicised Wally from Where’s Wally, but there were others hidden in the cities, and we think we’ve now rooted them all out!

We start with the famed nanny Mary Poppins, who waves at us from outside Cardiff’s Millennium Centre.

Another literary character, Sherlock Holmes, welcomes you to Cambridge. Sherlock is looking especially feminine today…

Another traditionally male role is the beefeater, the ceremonial guards of London Tower, but outside Birmingham’s Selfridges building we are greeted by a female beefeater.

Hmm, is it just me or do all three of these girls look remarkably similar?

Meanwhile in London, everyone’s favourite bear greets you to top tourist destinations.

Paddington Bear is simultaneously outside the British Museum, Trafalgar square, Portobello Road and (of course) Paddington Station!

Over in The Netherlands, it’s down to Google Street View’s own mascot, Pegman, to hide in the images.

Pegman was following the camera car around with his assistant, who we can from the side angle trying to hide behind him.

Elsewhere, we spot him again after just jumping out of the parked blue van.

Of course we aren’t sure that all the plants have been found… have you seen any unusual characters on your local Street VIew? Let us know in the comments or via Twitter.

Our all-out assault on Street View continues over on Twitter, and since we still haven’t integrated our Twitter posts into the main site anywhere, here’s another Friday roundup of the 10 best sights we’ve found recently.

Lady exposes genitals

At the exact moment that a Spanish Street View car was level with her crotch, this lady foolishly decided to uncross her legs. Which might not have been so bad, but for the fact that she appears to have forgotten to put on any underwear on this particular day.

Camera car commits suicide

This foolish Street View driver forgot he was driving a car with an enormous camera mounted on top, and managed to drive straight into a low bridge – decapitating the camera. The camera kept recording, so rotating the view of the now horizontal images can induce a certain level of nausea.

Unexpected elephant

Given which countries have so far been visited by the Street View team, we never expected to find an elephant in the available images.

Windows XP reborn

Just as the default XP desktop image is about to disappear forever, it’s resurrected in Google Street View!

British ability to queue astonishes everyone

I wonder how long these bored-looking people will be waiting at this bus stop?

World’s unluckiest van driver

This white-van driver must be incredibly unlucky, as not only has he crashed into a bollard, dislodging it from the concrete pavement and springing open his bonnet, but he managed to do it as the Street View car was recording him!

Serious injury recorded

Has this man collapsed, or was he hit by the driver of the scooter? In another frame we can also see him being loaded into an ambulance, so hopefully he made a full recovery.

The future of online shopping

If breast augmentation could be bought online and delivered, we might see more of these vans.

Tarzan found in San Francisco

Nearly naked man in nothing but a furry loincloth is spotted wandering the streets of San Francisco.

Google driver gets creative with the rules of the road

Lorry blocking a narrow Edinburgh street? No problem, just drive along the pavement!

Also of note, The Sex Police, Creative Tipp-exing, and someone demonstrates how not to engage in extreme sports, as well as hundreds more!

Finally, we also pulled a little April Fools’ Day prank with this tweet, which a surprising number of people fell for! (Cue evil laughter)

Undoubtedly, this couple have been caught on Google #streetview having sex. I guess we can all go home now! http://bit.ly/7Dda0

Remember, you don’t have to be a Twitter member to read our Twitter posts, and we also provide an RSS feed of the main site posts combined with the Street View ones.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to finding these sights!

Today we’re embarking on a brand new journey.

After long negotiations with Britain’s national mapping agency, we’re extremely pleased to announce that from today the website previously known as Google Sightseeing is to become ORDNANCE SURVEY SIGHTSEEING.

Ordnance Survey is one of the world’s largest producers of maps, and from now on we’ll only be linking to their highly detailed printed maps, and pointing out interesting features represented by a vast array of different icons.

We plan to feature footpaths, cycle paths, topographical sightings, water features and much, much more!

One of the most exciting features we’re bringing to you today means that each time you click through to our map, you’ll need to decide whether you need to see the OS Route, OS Road, OS Tour, OS Landranger, OS Explorer, OS Explorer Active or OS Landranger Active map! You’ll also be able to set the scale of the map at this point, but you won’t be able to change your mind again later.

Users of our map page API should be aware that as of today, latitude and longitudes will no longer work in the query string, and all lookups must instead be performed using an OS Grid reference. Additionally, all KML files will henceforth become GML format, and all previous files will cease to work.

Of course, using all this OS map data isn’t free, so we’ll be expecting all of our readers to chip in some cash to pay for the maps.

We’d like to thank you all for your support over the last four years, and sincerely hope you’ll continue with us on the latest leg of our journey towards inevitable Geographic Nirvana.

Update: Due to overwhelming popularity of the new site we’ve already burned through all our venture capital and “Ordnance Survey Sightseeing Inc.” are now bankrupt. The administrators are planning to revert the site to “Google Sightseeing” on April 2nd, 2009.

Tied up in Tilbury Docks, we find the MV Ross Revenge, home to Radio Caroline and one of the last surviving pirate radio ships.

For many people in the UK and Western Europe in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, pirate radio was the only source of good music – an alternative to the staid and strictly controlled national stations. Radio Caroline was the most well-known, and the longest running, of the pirate stations. It operated from a succession of ships that ran aground, sank or were impounded.

The Ross Revenge started life as a fishing vessel, and spent time as a diving support ship. After being fitted with 90m high antennas (the tallest mast on any ship) it took to the North Sea and started broadcasting in 1983. The masts are vaguely visible in Live Maps, but are best seen in this Panoramio image or historic photos.

The crews and DJs survived with clandestine deliveries of supplies from small or remote ports as supporting such operations was illegal. Similarly, most advertising originated overseas.

The ship weathered the dreadful storm of October 1987, a collapse of the mast, surveillance by government vessels and even a police raid of questionable legality. Despite surviving all these difficulties, the station closed in November 1990 due to a lack of funding and supplies. A year later a storm washed the ship onto a sandbank and the remaining crew was rescued.

After salvage and several relocations, the ship now rests in Tilbury docks, with volunteers working on restoration. Radio Caroline, now a legal satellite station, occasionally still broadcasts from the studios onboard.

Thanks to the excellent high-quality imagery in Google Earth, some “scientists”¹ claim to have discovered a 1,000-year-old forgotten relic of the fishing world.

Just off the coast of Wales they spotted this large v-shaped row of rocks beneath the water – which looked like a traditional British fishing weir. This was a fishing method whereby the tide would bring fish through the gaps in the rocks, which would then be blocked by wattle fences when the tide turned to flow out again.

The only problem with fishing in this way was that it was far too effective – this was so well known that the Magna Carta, published in 1215, actually includes the following clause:

(33) All fish-weirs shall be removed from the Thames, the Medway, and throughout the whole of England, except on the sea coast.

So our intrepid “scientists” actually took a trip to Wales to check out in person what they had found, and sure enough, one underwater scuba adventure later, they emerged smugly from the water like some sort of Internet-savvy Indiana Jones’.

How would “scientists” cope these days I wonder, without Google Earth to help them do their research?

Thanks to Frank at the GEarth Blog and Jason Kottke.