We had so many submissions for the Mall of America we had to post it back in May last year. So here is our revenge in the form of the Google Sightseeing team’s local “shopping centre”, The Gyle. It actually looks kinda cool from above.

Thanks Matthew Pettitt

Between 1984 and 1993 Rosyth Royal Navy Dockard was the UK’s sole location for refitting our nuclear submarines. These days the dockyard still does work on Royal Navy ships and is also the storage location for seven of the eleven decommissioned submarines, which you can clearly see in the satellite picture (the other 4 are at Devonport, Plymouth).

The submarines are: The HMS Dreadnought (the oldest of the UK’s submarines), HMS Churchill, HMS Swiftsure, HMS Resolution, HMS Repulse, HMS Renown and HMS Revenge. You can see a couple in the background of this ground level photo.

The last four made up the fleet of “Resolution class” submarines, which carried Polaris missiles and served as the UK’s nuclear deterrent for over 28 years and 228 unbroken patrols. All seven of the subs have now had their nuclear fuel rods removed but are still potentially dangerous and, worryingly, no-one’s quite sure what to do with them :-/

Thanks: subflux & Matthew

This is the tiny Scottish island of Little Cumbrae in the Firth of Clyde, near Glasgow. It has a jetty, two cottages, three vacant houses, a lighthouse complex and a twelve bedroom baronial mansion… and it’s currently for sale.

The price? A cool 3 million pounds.

There’s more info about Wee Cumbrae over at Wikipedia.

Well we’ve all finally recovered from James’ wedding which took place this Saturday, and in true Scottish style there was a fantastically enthusiastic Céilidh which went on until we could barely stand up any more! As is traditional, we ended with loud renditions of Auld Lang Syne and The Bonnie Banks o’ Loch Lomond.

And so, to continue the celebration, here are those bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond!

Loch Lomond is the second largest freshwater loch (or lake) in Great Britain in terms of water volume (as Loch Ness is much, much deeper), but it is Scotland’s largest loch when measured in surface area. Interestingly, some of those islands you can see in the middle of the loch are probably Crannogs, artificial islands built in prehistoric periods.

There’s loads of stuff to see on and around the Loch too. Just off the shore of the village of Luss (where they filmed that great Scottish export Take the High Road), you can see someone enjoying a spot of water-skiing.

Further south you can see the isle of Inchmurrin (a very large inland island by British standards), where the contrails of a jet are still visible. Although the aircraft itself has flown into an area of low-res, my guess would be a low flying fighter-plane, as they’re forever buzzing around up there.

Further south still and we get to the town of Balloch, where you can see the Loch Lomond Shores visitor centre and Drumkinnon Tower, which even has an IMAX! (Why does Balloch have one and Edinburgh doesn’t, eh?) Just to the north floats the newly-restored Maid of the Loch paddle steamer.

Finally on the east of Loch Lomond, we can see the peaks of Ben Lomond (the southernmost of the Scottish Munros), at the foot of which runs part of the West Highland Way. In the height of summer (when this photo must have been taken, trust me) note that there’s still snow on the summit, even though it’s pretty small at just 974 metres.

Phew, what a lot of links! Here’s just one more to the Loch Lomond homepage, which has lots more information about everything you could possibly want to know about the area

Thanks go out on James’ behalf for all your comments of congratulations, he should be landing in Aruba as I post this… while we’re all stuck in chilly Edinburgh freezing our collective arses off!

Edinburgh Zoo opened way back in 1913 and is probably most famous for the King Penguins, who have a daily “Penguin Parade” around their Penguin pool to the west, but for the thumbnail shot I’ve gone for the Darwin maze, which is shaped like a turtle.

I was browsing around for signs of life (very easy when you’ve been there hundres of times) and to the north there’s a couple of white splodges in the Zebra park, they could be Zebra?