Super fit Google Maps tryclist Rhys, and his Google Street View trike, visited Rosemoor this Thursday and Friday, to take photographs of the entire garden which will show up on Google Street View searches in the future. The initiative will put Rosemoor right on the virtual map, tempting people at home and abroad to explore the garden in an exciting new way.
Rosemoor, and the other RHS gardens, will join other tourist attractions including Stonehenge, Millennium Stadium, Angel of the North, Loch Ness, Eden Project and Warwick Castle.
Google & VisitBritain started the campaign earlier this year, and have seen a lot of enthusiasm from British people to get their favourite places onto Street View. The google tryclists have been extremely busy over the summer, photographing these places so that curious historians, students and tourists all over the globe can soon admire the country's heritage and plan their next weekend away.
The trike is an 18 stone mechanical masterpiece comprising three bicycle wheels, a mounted Street View camera and a specially decorated box containing image-collecting gadgetry. It has the same capability as the Street View cars for collecting street-level imagery and is designed to help Google make special imagery collections in places less accessible by cars, such as historic landmarks and coastal paths. The images collected by the trike will be carefully stitched together, a technological process that can take several months, before appearing on Google Maps.
I even got to have a little go on it!!
Joanna Rowe, Marketing Executive