Portmeirion was created by Sir Clough Williams-Ellis, who bought the land in 1925 with the intent of creating a purpose-built community inspired by locations he had visited around the Mediterranean, in particular the Italian town of Portofino. Much of the village was built before construction was halted with the onset of World War I in 1939. Beginning again in 1954, Williams-Ellis spent another couple of decades perfecting his design.

Portmeirion is a true resort – there is an admission fee to visit, and all the houses are rented as holiday cottages. The only residents are people who work in the hotel, shops and cafes which cater to tourists who generally arrive at the ‘Welcome Centre‘. This is rather different to The Prisoner, which saw visitors being knocked unconscious with gas and transported to The Village against their will.

The 17 episodes of The Prisoner featured scenes filmed in Portmeirion, and during 1966 and 1967 the combination of science fiction and psychological drama quickly attracted attention to the village, even though the filming location wasn’t revealed until the final episode. The number of annual visitors doubled to 100,000 in 1968, and today close to a quarter of a million people visit each year, either as tourists, or as visitors to the annual fan convention or music festival, Festival No6.

Taking a tour of filming locations gives us a good look around Portmeirion, so we’ll start with Number Six’s house, which is now used as a shop selling The Prisoner memorabilia.

The small plaza here is called Battery Square, and has several examples of the whimsical flourishes found all over Portmeirion to help with the Mediterranean feel.

From Number Six’s house, you go “across the square, across the street, and up the steps” where you “can’t miss” The Green Dome (now grey since being re-roofed) where Number Two lives and welcomes new residents to The Village. During the summer tourist season it serves as an art gallery.

Portmeirion is centered around a Central Piazza with a pond and ornate gardens which feature heavily in the exterior scenes of The Prisoner.

The Piazza includes several structures and portions of buildings moved from elsewhere, used here solely as decorative elements. These include the Bristol Colonnade (used as a bandstand) and the Gloriette.

After waking up in The Village in the first episode, Number Six heads across the Piazza to a café and the arch with a ‘phone box’ and nearby ‘free information’ booth, where the full realization of the strangeness of his situation starts to sink in.

Continuing along the road around the gardens, we reach the ‘Town Hall‘, which is actually a restaurant, and presumably doesn’t employ a force field to keep unwanted people out.

As we reach the shore, we can glimpse the lawn used as the helicopter landing pad, though it is today dominated by a swimming pool.

Then we get to the Old People’s Home, which is actually the main hotel for visitors staying in the village.

The Stone Boat is named the Amis Reunis. Originally a real boat which docked here, it was shipwrecked around 1930, but some portions were salvaged and used to create this permanent structure.

From the path along the shore we get sweeping views of the estuary sands and sea which feature often in the series, including at the end of the iconic opening sequence, where Number Six declares “I am not a number, I am a free man!”

A short distance north-east from the village (although considerably farther than it appears to be in the TV show) is The Hospital – in reality a medieval mansion called Castell Deudraeth. The building was extensively renovated and opened as a hotel in 2001.

Portmeirion has been used as a location in numerous other TV shows, music videos and other aspects of popular culture. A Tom Baker Doctor Who episode was filmed there, which led somebody to create this mashup of The Doctor and Number Six being chased through the village!

If you are not able to visit in person you can take a video tour from Jools Holland (quirky, architecture-focused) or Paul Smith (Prisoner-focused, variable sound quality).

There are countless online resources about Portmeirion (official site, Wikipedia) and The Prisoner. I suggest you start with Wikipedia, The Prisoner Appreciation Society and The Unmutual.

Thanks to eRez, Bob Sabiston and AndrewAnorak.

Be seeing you!

Locations: Wales / Categories: Buildings, Movie Locations, Street Views

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The Caland Canal allows ships to pass from the North Sea via the Nieuwe Waterweg to the industrial port of Brittaniehaven. As ships increased in size – in particular those used to transport cars – the narrow waterway became more difficult to navigate in strong winds, particularly around the Calandbrug bridge.

In the mid-1980s architect Martin Strujis and artist Frans de Wit were tasked with creating an effective – yet aesthetically pleasing – wind barrier. Using a number of different designs for the slabs, they were able to provide the required protection, allowing only 25% of the wind to pass through, yet be judged pleasing enough to the eye that the windscherm is also considered to be a large-scale landscape art installation.

The southern section uses the largest semi-circular slabs – 25m tall and 18m wide.

These immense barriers shield the harbour, where ships maneuver slowly to and from the dockside.

Around the bridge, the slabs are the same height and still semi-circular to deflect the most wind, but narrower (4m) and spaced much more closely together to provide maximum protection as ships pass through this narrow obstacle with only a small distance to spare on either side. This YouTube video (in Dutch) shows just how tricky this passage is³.

Canal traffic has priority, so as the port became busier, road and rail traffic on the bridge increasingly faced lengthy delays. To ease congestion, a tunnel was built just to the south in 2004.

A bike route also crosses the bridge, and a special portal was created to protect cyclists from swirling air currents created by the barrier.

North of the bridge, the semi-circular slabs are replaced with slabs 10m square, which – placed on top of a 15m embankment – attain the same 25m height as the other sections.

The barrier continues in this form until it ends in a stand of trees near a gas storage facility.

Locations: Netherlands / Categories: Bridges, Street Views, Structures, Watercraft

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The Kingdom of Lesotho (pronounced li-SU-tu) occupies 30,355 km2 (12,727 sq mi) in the middle of South Africa and gained its independence from the United Kingdom in 1966. While it’s easily recongisable on a map from being an enclave in the middle of another country, it’s also recognisable from space even without a map due to the large amount of deforestation in Lesotho; two-third’s of the country economy is based in agriculture.

Most visitors to Lesotho enter through the capital, Maseru, a city of a quarter-million people which lies directly on the western border. Maseru is easily the largest and most modern city in the country.

The Lesotho Parliament sits high on a mountaintop in the middle of Maseru.

Lesotho’s only university is the National University of Lesotho in the town of Roma. The entrance to the University has become a hot area for businesses and street vendors in recent years.

Around 75% of Lesotho’s population lives in rural areas, and most of the population is concentrated in the lowlands along the western border. A common sight along the roadside is people gathered around bus shelters made from corrugated steel waiting for the next minibus. Often attached to these are public telephone booths.

Another common sight is the rather staggering amount of billboards and signs along the roadside advertising AIDS prevention services and, even more distressingly, funeral services. Adult prevalence of AIDS in Lesotho is 28.9% according to the UN; the third-highest rate in the world.

Because Lesotho’s population is concentrated in the lowlands, the mountain highlands were largely left alone by Street View. Still, the cameras did capture some of the spectacular scenery, such as at Maletsunyane Falls. At 192 m (630 ft), it’s the highest single-drop waterfall in all of southern Africa.

The highlands are also the source of Lesotho’s major export: electricity. The Lesotho Highlands Water Project exports electricity to South Africa generated from two hydroelectric dams in the centre of the country, Mohale and Katse. The project is scheduled to add three more dams in the coming years. At 145 m (476 ft), Mohale Dam is Africa’s tallest rock-fill dam, while Katse Dam is the second-largest dam in all of Africa, standing 185 m (607 ft).

As seen from the tops of Katse and Mohale, even in the middle of the highlands the forests have long been stripped bare. Soil erosion caused by deforestation has ruined much of the country’s land; a major problem in a place where less than 11 percent of the land is suitable for growing crops.

It’s not all doom and gloom, however. Thanks to its high altitude, Lesotho is home to one of Africa’s few ski resorts. The cameras came by in the middle of summer, though, so no snow is present.

The Street View cameras managed to capture quite a few slices of bucolic rural life in Lesotho. Here, we see a farmer with his cattle (and associated cattle by-products) in front of his traditional Sotho hut, a group of children who decided to chase after the Street View car down this dead-end road, and a traditional village so remote that it doesn’t even have roads.

Hopefully, we will get to see even more of rural Africa in the coming months. South Africa and Botswana are already on the roster, and Swaziland is scheduled to be added soon.

Locations: Lesotho / Categories: Animals, Buildings, Crowds, Natural Landmarks, Street Views

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Does anyone want to have a go at providing an alternative suggestion of what might be going on here?

Via @myfangrykitty.

Locations: Netherlands / Categories: Bridges, Crowds, Watercraft

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Any tour of the ice hockey world should probably begin at the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto. Established in 1943, the Hall has collected countless amounts of hockey memorabilia and inducted 370 members for their contributions to the game. Since 1992, the Hall has been located in this historic downtown Toronto building. Its museum has 4,700 m2 (50,600 sq. ft.) of exhibition space and receives 300,000 visitors each year.

As with many major team sports, ice hockey was already played informally by the beginning of the 19th century, becoming formally codified in the middle of the century. The first modern hockey game with proper rules was played on 3 March 1875 at Montreal’s Victoria Skating Rink. Closed in 1925, the site of the humble wooden rink has long been occupied by a parking garage. It’s a far cry from Michigan Stadium, where in 2010 a massive 113,411 fans watched teams from the University of Michigan and Michigan State University do battle. The NHL will attempt to replicate the feat next January when the Detroit Red Wings and Toronto Maple Leafs play in the same stadium.

Ice hockey fans often create their own shrines to the game. This pub in Columbus, Ohio is all decked out for the next Blue Jackets match.¹²

As you’re likely aware, hockey is borderline religion in Canada. It’s even responsible for Canada’s most popular restaurant chain. In 1964, Maple Leafs star defenceman Tim Horton parlayed some of his hockey earnings into a doughnut store in Hamilton, Ontario. Five decades later, Tim Hortons has over 4,500 locations around the world, but the original Hamilton store is still going (note the plaque).

Other stars of the day took up more esoteric endeavours. Chicago forward Bill Mosienko ³ opened up a chain of bowling alleys in his native Winnipeg. His family still operates this alley, which bears a giant mural in Mosienko’s honour.

Another mural recipient is Paul Henderson, who scored the winning goal for Canada against the Soviet Union in the 1972 Summit Series, the first-ever best-on-best meeting between the two ice hockey superpowers of the day at the height of the Cold War. An estimated 75% of Canadian households watched the final game. Henderson’s hometown of Lucknow, Ontario painted this mural for the previously unheralded player who instantly became a national sporting hero.⁴

These days, ice hockey is a truly international game. 72 countries are now members of the International Ice Hockey Federation, including unlikely candidates such as Thailand, India, and Qatar. Players who head off to the NHL to ply their trade can become national heroes back home. On the side of the Arena Riga in Riga, Latvia, we find this giant poster of Sandis Ozoliņš, who played 15 seasons in the NHL and was voted the country’s most popular sportsman in 2009⁵. Perhaps the biggest evidence of the sport’s growth can be found in places like the Rødovre Skøjte Arena, a small rink in the suburbs of Copenhagen. There are fewer than 5,000 registered ice hockey players in all of Denmark, yet three of them – Mikkel Bødker, Lars Eller, and Jannik Hansen – emerged from a junior team based at this rink to end up as prominent players in the NHL in recent years.

The second-strongest ice hockey league in the world is the Eastern Europe-based Kontinental Hockey League (KHL). Tragedy struck the league in September 2011 when the entire roster of Lokomotiv Yaroslavl, containing many international stars, was killed in a plane crash en route to the season’s first game. Yaroslavl’s Arena 2000 continues to display the images of the 37 players and staff who perished.

More than anywhere else in Europe, ice hockey has been embraced by Finland, where it is the most popular sport. Numerous hockey stars come from Finland to play in the NHL, and as we see at Helsinki’s Hartwall Areena, Finland hosts NHL games itself, such as the Chicago/Florida tilt advertised on this poster. The NHL now opens every season with multiple games in Finland and Sweden.

The most out-of-place rink may be the one in the United Arab Emirates. Surrounded by the heat of the Arabian desert, Emiratis and expatriates play with and against each other in a rink inside the Dubai Mall, the world’s largest enclosed shopping centre. There is a five-team national league and eight-team amateur league, and in recent years the UAE has even begun sending teams to the World Championships.

And what coffee and doughnut shop happens to overlook the rink? You guessed it, Tim Hortons.

Locations: Denmark, Finland, Latvia, Manitoba, Michigan, Ohio, Ontario, Quebec, Russia, United Arab Emirates / Categories: 45˚ Imagery, Buildings, Stadiums and Sport, Street Views

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