Geolocation Exercises

[Giddierone]

Where exactly was this taken today?

 

[JMartJr]

Well, the gorse is a clue. Doesn't nail it down, but narrows it down.

 

[JMartJr]

Oh, I missed the tank, that's a clue, too I wonder if it is on a military range in Britain...

 

[Ridcully]

Kind of a lucky find. I guess the location should be here:

Spoiler

South England, on the SW Coast Path, looking at Lulworth Castle: Google Maps

First I suspected it to be part of the Maginot line in France so I did a picture search with "france abandoned tank" trying to find one with a similar biome. After some misses I've found one that fit quite nicely.

Quick check on Google Earth showed that the surrounding terrain details like roads, hills and buildings matched pretty good:

Last proof was the little white house in the distance which fits quite well. Also the roof form of the mansion fits.

Was my guess correct?

 

[Giddierone]

Was my guess correct?

Perfect!
RIS is usually my first call but with this one I checked it with Overpass Turbo [Landuse=military / military=training_area] which, used with other terrain details, narrows it down quite quickly if you "fly" over the various sites you can line up all the features quickly.

Spoiler: Answer

Google Earth even has a decent "street view" from almost exactly where I was standing.

 

[Trailblazer]

I see this has already been solved - that area would have been my guess too as it's not flat enough to be Salisbury Plain, which is also well littered with tanks! Picture from a bike ride a couple of years ago. I decided not to wander over for a closer look...

 

[Giddierone]

https://earthkit.app/ appears to be a useful tool for geolocation. It allows Overpass Turbo queries to be generated from natural language inputs using AI. This does a great job of finding actual OSM tags for things.

The Geoestimation tool seems quite good too. Here i've input the image from #38 with no other prompt, and it's narrowed a global search to the North of England / Scotland, which is a pretty good starting point.

 

[NorCal Dave]

The Geoestimation tool seems quite good too. Here i've input the image from #38 with no other prompt, and it's narrowed a global search to the North of England / Scotland, which is a pretty good starting point.

You can just put in a photo and it'll at least give you a starting area? That's pretty slick. I was trying to use it, but my PC is giving me grief right now. It's a clunker.