h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Ah yes. I know Three Cocks well.

B

Quote of the day, I reckon

Is that the Three Cocks close to the Halfway Inn ?

No, but they are within shooting distance of Lord Hereford's Knob.

B

Fascinating. I've been dropped on a road in some mountains. Some progress shows me some cyclists, and eventually a car. He's driving on the left, which narrows things down considerably. The signs at the side of the road are in Chinese-looking ideograms and English, so I'm already guessing I'm in Hong Kong. I pass a couple of randoms pulling those suitcase-with-a-handle-on-wheels things, which makes me think for a moment I must be near an airport and this might be very easy. I pass "Bride's Pool Barbecue Place"... ?

All the roadsigns look English, reinforcing my impression that it's Hong Kong. Roadworks, with dates and a bunch of guys sitting around...

Roadsign... stay on the main road towards Fan Ling, or right towards Wu Kau Tang? Main road...

Now I'm looking at a long, long section of very straight road...

I've now reached a point where it's taken me eight clicks to make the damn thing understand I want to follow the road round a corner, so I'm giving up. I'm also clearly in a very mountainous region where an airport couldn't be. I'm by a lake, or possibly the sea....

I find I am on Luk Keng Road, Shuen Wan, New Territories, Hong Kong.

Consulting a map, I discover that yes, it was the sea, specifically Starling Inlet. I find I'm just a few miles - walking distance, realistically - from the major city of Shenzen. I think if I'd been dropped on the spot I was given with a passport and let's say £10,000, I'd have been able to identify where I was and get to an international airport within an hour - probably quicker than I could if you similarly dropped me where I'm sitting at home typing this....

Interesting experiment, would work better if Streetview's interface was better and worked quicker. I'd estimate I wasn't making more than about 15mph, which if you were dropped somewhere even moderately remote would mean it would take AGES to get anywhere...

Well, this evening I played this with my ten year old son (who has been REALLY BORED MUM all day). We were on separate laptops and the rules were:

If you found you were in the UK, you had to find out what county you were in
If you found you were somewhere else, you just had to find out what country you were in
If you found you were in Asia, and all the roadsigns were unreadable, you could skip to the next location
You could google any road signs/business names you saw

We also discovered that if you were somewhere warm and sunny you probably weren't in the UK.

I kept ending up in Italy but I also visited Israel, Lithuania, Wales and Western Australia - AN HOUR of scrolling through desert until I finally found a road sign.

Osh stopped after 20 (he beat me, I only got to 13, but he had more skippable ones, and I kept looking up my location on Google maps once I'd discovered where I was) and really enjoyed it.

Mol

I tried, but it writes the location in the lower right corner... Spoilsports.

Ah. Stealth option.