Viewing Essex from a great height

One of the great things about the internet is the maps. I have recently made the discovery that you can get superb birds eye pictures of certain parts of the UK via the Microsoft site local.live.com. You may need a special whathaveyou installed on your computer, I’m not sure, and you do really need broadband….

roundabout

One of the great things about the internet is the maps. I have recently made the discovery that you can get superb birds eye pictures of certain parts of the UK via the Microsoft site local.live.com. You may need a special whathaveyou installed on your computer, I’m not sure, and you do really need broadband. You can see our house splendidly clearly from above from four different directions and zoom in to see a remarkable level of detail. I’m not going to post a link to the house, but the roundabout in Basildon above (which I thought was beautiful in its own way) is here.

The detail that is included for much of Essex is way better than on Google Maps / Google Earth. The areas that are included in such splendid detail on Microsoft Live are quite patchy though. I found, for eample, that places I know in South Wales and Berkshire and Surrey are not included. Nottingham, which I chose entirely at random, is.