"Where am I?" Game

[S. aureus]

I've found a 4th wheel! Still not found wheel 1 or the estate, though.

[caja-dglh]

The wheels are in Shotton and Horden. Which forces you into Peterlee. Someone else can work out the plaque an planting, but I expect it is to C W Clarke?

[Various Artist]

Well done mate, I had Horden and Shotton wheels too but was searching just a couple of hundred yards in the wrong direction, the northwest side of Passfield Way instead of the southeast side.

Here's the plaque and planting, a couple of bends further down the road:
https://www.google.com/maps/@54.7498...4!8i8192?hl=en

[caja-dglh]

ah, it is the sodding pavilion. Which is where I started!

[Various Artist]

Unfortunately there's no closer view of the plaque, so we'll have to wait for Fuss to enlighten us I think.

[Fussbudget]

Got it. Down the way from the Apollo in Peterlee.

https://www.google.com/maps/@54.7535...7i13312!8i6656

Woohoo! We're indeed just outside the Grade II-listed Apollo Pavilion in Peterlee, the only town in the UK named after a trade unionist and to my knowledge the only town in the world designed by an abstract artist (not that you can tell from what it looks like these days.) The estate is the Sunny Blunts housing estate which used to look like this. Really interesting but depressing place.

I love how underwhelming the pavilion looks from the StreetView angle even for a fan of brutalist architecture:



I assume I'm missing a joke but the plaque will be to Victor Pasmore who designed the whole thing

[Various Artist]

ah, it is the sodding pavilion. Which is where I started!

Oh I see it now, there's just a glimpse of the bottom corner in pic no.1. Brutalist, indeed.

Edit: Pic no.2, that should've read.

[Various Artist]

The estate is the Sunny Blunts housing estate which used to look like this.

Oh that's cool Fuss, nice one. At what point do you think they realised it rains quite a lot in northeastern England and decided it was perhaps worth adding pitched roofs after all?

[caja-dglh]

It is really fascinating that any time anyone designs a house of the future they imagine a future where we have worked out how to get a flat roof to work with rain.

[Various Artist]

The pavilion is indeed underwhelming from the StreetView angle, isn't it? I trawled all along there trying to get a better peer at the plaque and plants, but didn't once spot anything interesting in the background...!

[Fussbudget]

I didn't realise I'd accidentally walked into the flat roof hater convention, sheesh. They get a lot of rain in continental Europe as well you know

Peterlee also has a lot of those single pitch roofs which are a good compromise between standard pitched roofs (bo-ring) and flat roofs (alien technology that still boggles British minds)

[ursus arctos]

One needs to look at annual snowfall totals for dglh's current manor

[caja-dglh]

I do not hate flat roof design. The house in my neighborhood I would buy in a heartbeat has a flat roof (actually I tried to get my wife to look at the crazy house further out in the burbs that San B found - no dice) I am just also very aware of how expensive the maintenance is in practice.

[San Bernardhinault]

Flat and butterfly roofing is lovely. And works fine when properly designed and installed using modern materials.

[S. aureus]

Back when I lived in an apartment complex (here in California) they re-did the roofs, which were flat with ledges (walls, parapets?) around them, only when doing so they covered over the drainage holes. So, next time it rained (which may well have been several months later) all the rain collected as giant puddles on the roofs, and eventually forced its way through drenching almost every apartment in the complex. Fortunately our particular unwanted shower missed all the electronics.

[caja-dglh]

Can someone else put one up - I am going to be tied up for a few hours at least.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

[Fussbudget]

Big industrial port, tramlines, drive on the right, must be Rotterdam.

More seriously the little hanging lampshades (?) made me think of Istanbul for some reason but I don't think that's right and I don't even know what continent we're looking at. The cars and road look dusty, people mostly seem to have very dark hair and one of the people on the left is possibly wearing a burqa (or maybe it's just a dark outfit with a hood, hard to tell.)

The blocky building on the left with a big screen above the door is intriguing, I'd love to know what's playing on that screen (adverts?) Somebody seems to be dragging a suitcase so it could be a hotel I guess, in a nice quiet location

[ursus arctos]

I originally thought there might be Arabic script above the scree, but I now I think it is just anti-pigeon stuff.

A number of Swiss cities have lights like that on a tram lines, but I am confident that it isn't Switzerland.

It doesn't look to be Vladivostok. I think the proximity of the "hotel" to operating container cranes is going to be unusual.

[S. aureus]

The people on the left look to have masks on, which would have been more helpful pre-2020.

[S. aureus]

Is that dust, or a light layer of dirty snow? I was thinking the latter.

[Sam]

I knew one of the flags was bound to be a giveaway but that was some very rapid spotter work by Sam.

Thanks! I'm rather pleased to catch up with the thread and see it helped push things in the right direction. Albeit a little frustrated that I might well have got it myself if I'd decided to look at roads near to the railway/U-bahn line on the other side of the Stadtpark from where I was looking!

[caja-dglh]

Thanks! I'm rather pleased to catch up with the thread and see it helped push things in the right direction. Albeit a little frustrated that I might well have got it myself if I'd decided to look at roads near to the railway/U-bahn line on the other side of the Stadtpark from where I was looking!

The nature of the game is to be so close and fail, then get the complete buzz of hitting the right spot a different time. It is a really fun game when it gets going like this, and no one is competitive (except S.A. cos jdsx is beating him

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

[Various Artist]

OK, that's a lower-key vista than I was anticipating from the first one. I thought we were in some kind of busy port (and the building on the left perhaps a ferry terminal or similar), but this is an oddly 'quiet' scene considering. What do we suppose those tapering obelisk-shaped pylon things are for?

To revisit a comment I remember making on some other go a few weeks ago, the building opposite reminds me of nothing so much as my local Royal Mail sorting office.

Curiously, the one on the left in the first pic is now reminding me of nothing so much as my local Vue cinema multiplex.

I assume both of these notions are a billion miles off, but stranger things and all that...