How can't you see....

...the wilderness growing free?

The world is a fascinating place. I'd love to have seen more of it over the years, but many factors have combined to keep me pretty shackled to this wee island. I'm not the kind of person who'd enjoy being camped out in the middle of nowhere, nor resting among hundreds of grotty students in hostels. For me when I travel, it has to be nice hotels, or bijou bed & breakfasts. Add this to a distinct lack of cash over the years, and you can see they aren't healthy bedfellows. Now that I have a young family, thoughts of travel slip further into the backburner. Therefore my current thirst for exploring new places rests on the shoulders of the excellent 'Google Maps' service, and in particular, the all new and improved 'Streetview' feature. Well, I say 'all new', this feature has actually been in existence for some time, but has been limited to the USA, Australia, Japan, and bizarrely the route of the Tour De France bike race. Now however, it has been expanded to cover the UK, and various major European cities.

My initial excitement at discovering the UK was now covered was blighted somewhat when I realised Stirling wasn't to be included. It's funny, isn't it? I have access to virtual tours of many major cities around the world, and the first thing I wanted to do was wander down my own street to see if I was in. Not to be deterred, I had a wander down many of the streets in Glasgow and Auld Reekie, retracing my steps from many a drunken night out. Great fun. In fact, whilst snooping through the streets of Glasgow, I decided to have a virtual Subcrawl , only without the drink and the long walks. It was particularly insightful on the latter sections of the journey, as my memory during the actual event is somewhat hazy. I always wondered why I could never remember the Kelvinhall stop, and it transpires that I've been getting the Partick stop mixed up with it!

The Laurieston in Glasgow, one of the early Subcrawl stops

It was nice to see both Amsterdam and Florence included in the update, two great cities I've visited over the last few years. I managed to locate both hotels I stayed in, and 'walked' through many of the same thoroughfares as I did when there for real, even if this did bring back painful memories of walking to the top of the Campanile in Florence in searing May heat! Walking around American cities is always fun. You can investigate many of the seedier areas of Baltimore for example, and it feels like your very own episode of 'The Wire', or you can wander along the Miami boardwalks where I swear you can actually feel the sun. Talking of Florida, one of Stirling's twin cities is a town called Dunedin, and having a donner about there has fuelled my ambition to visit the place one day. I have this undoubtedly misguided perception that the locals would treat me like a king, as I reckon the Americans are more into sister towns than the folks here. I can just imagine the reception a Dunedin resident would get in the Anchor in St Ninians, for example.

Anyway, that's all for now, stay tuned for more nonsense tomorrow.