Giddierone
Senior Member.
There can't be many of these basin's (Marina). This one in Belgium is 300m x 45m and appears to be around the same size as the one in the photo. I'd imagine it survived the war.
Geolocation Exercises
- Thread starter JFDee
- Start date
Google maps of Le Bassin
yeah I think that's the most likely feature to have survived from the 1940s. In the original photo there seems to be another lock or basin on the other side of the canal. I presume that one is for loading/unloading the barges and the large one is for mooring the barge when they are waiting.
I've tried searching for a number of features using Overpass Turbo. waterway=canal or waterway=river brings up a lot of routes across northern Europe. Slightly better is boat=yes or motorboat=yes, which only shows navigable waterways. But still were at the mercy of the OSM database.
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TEEJ
Senior Member.
Perhaps contacting the following website might solve the mystery location?
https://marinas.com/browse/marina/BE
20 pages for Netherlands Marinas
https://marinas.com/browse/marina/NL
From
https://marinas.com/browse/marina
https://marinas.com/
https://marinas.com/browse/marina/BE
20 pages for Netherlands Marinas
https://marinas.com/browse/marina/NL
From
https://marinas.com/browse/marina
https://marinas.com/
Giddierone
Senior Member.
Now I'm doubting it's either the Netherlands or Belgium. Haven't seen any canal / train yard / marina intersections that match. And the marina shapes in Germany are more trapezoidal. Maybe it's England after all. Like New Holland. Or maybe it's just unrecognizable today.
where in England has canals & fields like that. I've been checking most of England too but can't find any matches, particularly for power stations, or steelworks & railyards.
Giddierone
Senior Member.
Humberside, New Holland, Brigg and surrounding areas are not dissimilar.
EDIT: Aire and Calder Navigation
deirdre
Senior Member
its a pretty huge set up..industry wise..if it is Germany im sure we or the brits blew it to smithereens ie it
would not look the same today.
TEEJ
Senior Member.
Coal-fired power stations in England. 110 listed.
https://www.famousfix.com/list/coal-fired-power-stations-in-england
https://www.famousfix.com/list/coal-fired-power-stations-in-england
Giddierone
Senior Member.
Weirdly Grok believes (and it completely convinced) this is a "near identical" image of the site.
https://www.gluckauf.nl/staatsmijn-maurits/luchtfoto-s-stm-maurits
These from the Maurits State Mine look more similar. if you note the cooling towers top left (not the foreground ones) and the dark gas holders.
https://www.gluckauf.nl/staatsmijn-maurits/luchtfoto-s-stm-maurits
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Giddierone
Senior Member.
I quite like that there's an area of heavy industry in the Netherlands named Chemelot.
jarlrmai
Senior Member.
Tis a silly place.
Giddierone
Senior Member.
So do we think this is it? Where's the canal and marina?
I don't think this is it, but I think we're closing in. The Dutch Mines (mijnen) or cokeplant (cokefabrik) seem ot have all thr right features. But I havent found one yet with enough matching landscape, canal and marina.
Giddierone
Senior Member.
There's some good historical maps available here: https://www.topotijdreis.nl/kaart/1939/@184804,331362,10.56
Haven't had a chance to delve into them but this one is of the Maurits State Mine area mentioned above.
EDIT: Just an observation but having browsed around and marveld at how flexible the landuse seems to be in the Netherlands. Canals appear and then get altered, and marinas get dug out then filled in. Look at this area near Wessem and how it changes from 1978-1979.
1978 left, today right.
and 1979
Haven't had a chance to delve into them but this one is of the Maurits State Mine area mentioned above.
EDIT: Just an observation but having browsed around and marveld at how flexible the landuse seems to be in the Netherlands. Canals appear and then get altered, and marinas get dug out then filled in. Look at this area near Wessem and how it changes from 1978-1979.
1978 left, today right.
and 1979
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Grok and Google AI etc are completely terrible at identifying images like this, and often confidently state that an image shows something that looks nothing like it. Plenty of people on that Facebook group get caught out by it.
Giddierone
Senior Member.
I was just going to say the same. They don't seem to understand the spatial relation between components that have a resemblance. I tried to argue Grok out of it's conclusion but it could not be convinced. RIS like Yandex and Google Lens do a better job than AI of providing "similar looking" images for human eyes to judge.
I've found it. Finally due to a bit of luck. I was pretty sure this was not UK, but was in Northern Europe. I was also pretty sure that this was not a power station, or a mine, but a coke factory. I have been searching through every coke factory in the Netherlands, Belgium and most of western Germany with no luck. Time to expand the search to northern France. I can speak a little French and after working out that the French call them a cokerie, I typed into google "cokerie nord france pres de canal" (Translated: coke factory northern France near canal) and this image came up.
Source: https://apphim.fr/articles.php?lng=fr&pg=2549&mnuid=1136&tconfig=0
I knew immediately that it was it. But where was it? It was on the source webpage:
It is the Coke Factory of the Lens Mines near to Vendin-le-Viel in northern France. (Google Maps)
Comparison of the OP with GE - the basin and the railways is entirely gone, but the features can still be seen. The river is the Deûle Canal.
Edit - from this page linked by @Matt33 below (now with 3 cooling towers)
That was hard.
Two Water Towers (streetview)
Source: https://apphim.fr/articles.php?lng=fr&pg=2549&mnuid=1136&tconfig=0
I knew immediately that it was it. But where was it? It was on the source webpage:
It is the Coke Factory of the Lens Mines near to Vendin-le-Viel in northern France. (Google Maps)
Comparison of the OP with GE - the basin and the railways is entirely gone, but the features can still be seen. The river is the Deûle Canal.
Edit - from this page linked by @Matt33 below (now with 3 cooling towers)
That was hard.
your image is full of straight lines that are absent in the image we're examining
Dors anyone know what these are? (top center)
Two Water Towers (streetview)
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deirdre
Senior Member
that's funny i was gonna ask you guys about France. (mostly because Normandy is the only location i could name associated with the war). Never heard of a coke factory before... very cool sleuthing!
Giddierone
Senior Member.
Sacre bleu! Well done! I'd done a similar OverpassTurbo search of the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany and had nothing.
There are some useful old maps on this viewer from the National Library of Scotland which lets you compare locations side by side with a slider. Here's a map from 1917 that predates the construction of the cooling towers and much of the train yard in front, but you can at least see the basin and labels for surrounding features. There are a number of map overlays to choose from so have fun exploring.
https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/sid...&lon=2.88583&layers=101465008&right=ESRIWorld
Giddierone
Senior Member.
Here's a better aerial photo from sometime between 1950-60 (with three cooling towers).
EDIT: also looking at GE historical imagery it looks like the site survived long after the war as the towers are still there in 1985.
https://www.geamap.com/en/france#zo...7&layer=89&overlays=FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
EDIT: also looking at GE historical imagery it looks like the site survived long after the war as the towers are still there in 1985.
https://www.geamap.com/en/france#zo...7&layer=89&overlays=FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
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Matt33
Senior Member
A webpage dedicated to the history of the plant:
http://lelensoisnormand.unblog.fr/2010/03/29/la-centrale-de-vendin-le-vieil/
Built in 1909, 1930 first concrete cooling tower, bombed 21 times during WW II, out of service in 1972, demolition began 1985.
Just read that it's more or less the same information as in Flarkey's link above, years differ a bit.
http://lelensoisnormand.unblog.fr/2010/03/29/la-centrale-de-vendin-le-vieil/
Built in 1909, 1930 first concrete cooling tower, bombed 21 times during WW II, out of service in 1972, demolition began 1985.
Just read that it's more or less the same information as in Flarkey's link above, years differ a bit.
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After looking back at the original post I think it might be that the third cooling tower was always there but was obscured by the cloud or steam, peut-être?
Mendel
Senior Member.
terrible job IMO, it filled the canal in in places, removed the basin on the left, all of the barges, and most of the railway yard
Matt33
Senior Member
As a first attempt (actually second, I asked for color) not too shabby. Further prompting may resolve the issues. My idea was to let it then trace all roads and details and create a type of bird's eye view Google Maps road map. That failed miserably, I gave up quickly, though, and it might be possible.
Giddierone
Senior Member.
It doesn't look like there's a structure behind the cloud. Here I've copy pasted a third tower (boxed in pink) which looks right to me when you compare it with the overhead shot. The green line through the boxy building seems to line up with the centre of what would be the middle tower.
Giddierone
Senior Member.
Easy. It is Calvine.
Edit: but seriously @Giddierone - is that even solvable? What attack path would you propose, other than a brute force method of looking through streetview images of every rural area in Scotland?
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Giddierone
Senior Member.
Well, I won't set it as a quiz, but I'd have thought a bit of lateral thinking would solve it quite quickly. Given that I've posted other things from Scotland you could make some assumptions about the general area it's likely to be in and that it's a recent photo, (EDIT: taken on 26 July 2025) then you could cross-reference with recent Copernicus satellite photos taking in a large search area (correcting for the low angle perspective), it's quite a distinctive field...
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Giddierone
Senior Member.
What's this then?
deirdre
Senior Member
a windsock
Mendel
Senior Member.
a white speck and a red arrow
there's also a white speck "on the grass"
I thought at first this is a scratch, but it might be a contrail?
and some kind of spire?
and is the gray thing an aircraft?
and what house is this?
gonna guess the white dot is orbital or celestial, given the length of the shadows
A church spire, some buildings under construction, a low-flying aircraft, a couple of crows... the building on the right seems like the most distinctive clue but I'm drawing a blank.
I had thought it might have been a reflection off the top of the Shard in London, but cant get the rest of the scene to fit.
This reminded me of Canary Wharf
I can't think of an angle where you could see the top of Canary Wharf without other tall buildings being in shot. It used be fairly isolated but these days it has a lot of tall neighbours.
Assuming it is a recent photo (and the autumn colours look right for now) then perhaps finding the construction project would be a better approach.
Are we still assuming london? We know @Giddierone lives in London (https://gideonreid.co.uk/about/) ...?
The shadows suggest we are looking west. Assuming the plane is landing at Heathrow and is on an ILS approach to westely runway it should help to narrow the search area.
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