Manic Pop

Another installment in my series of Google Earth trips, this one which I explored extensively over 3 days. I started getting interested in the Cotswold town of Winchcombe, in Gloucestershire, England sometime earlier this year. I don't know what I was doing, but I was clicking around on Pinterest (a rare occasion) and somehow ended up on Sudeley Castle which has history with a wife of Henry VIII. Perhaps I was looking at photos of abandoned buildings? Sudeley Castle has beautiful medieval ruins amongst the castle grounds along with gardens. Now, if you know me I'm not much of a castle-girl but I've always been into England (hey, I am from New England myself!) and oddly, when I think of England, I generally think of the Cotwolds with it's rolling hills rather than London. I didn't know it was the Cotswolds until this Google Earth trip, but it's what I have imagined when I envision England for quite some time. I don't even know where this vision came from...

I've been doing this thing for a few months... I really don't know how often at all anyone uses Google Earth anymore (aside from looking at Street View to find that one place you're headed to on Friday night but not quite sure where it is.) When it first came out as Google Earth in 2005, I was enthralled with what you could see - so little compared to now, but the 3D buildings feature was a fantastic new thing. Now there are so many images of so many places via street view that one can literally start traveling the world by street view alone and that's exactly what I have been doing. I've started documenting my "travels" by hitting print screen and cropping in Photoshop of interesting buildings and places around the world. Typically, my "travels" are spurred by a few things: Today for instance, I saw that I have a friend who has a friend from Legnica, Poland (thanks, Facebook.) I Googled photos of said place, saw a few interesting buildings, ...