Strange and wonderful places near us...

[Kit-Ginevra]

One of the joys of travelling around for work is being able to find all sorts of amazing places-some of which are rather on the bonkers side.

There's Parliament Street, Britain's narrowest street.You can just about squeeze one person through it if you turn sideways.

And then this week,I got to visit Clovelly. The village is traffic free-nothing wheeled is allowed unless you're a resident and then you have to park it in the pub car park.
Even the bus isn't allowed there. Visiting? You have to get off the bus stop and walk through the visitor centre down into the village.If you have something heavy to deliver,you have to put it on a sledge and it will be lowered down or hauled up... Very bizarre

So what weird and odd places are in your neck of the woods?

[April]

Manitou Springs is this hippy little town with spring waters. It rose to fame years and years ago, because people with TB and the like thought the waters were healing. They have a coffin race every year. Emma Crawford was buried on top of one of the mountains, and I guess, during a storm, the coffin came down the mountain. So now they race hand built coffins. It was also at one time rumored to be the witch capital of the world. If you google Manitou springs witch capital, you will get a ton of results.

[klhanson]

One of the joys of travelling around for work is being able to find all sorts of amazing places-some of which are rather on the bonkers side.

There's Parliament Street, Britain's narrowest street.You can just about squeeze one person through it if you turn sideways.

And then this week,I got to visit Clovelly. The village is traffic free-nothing wheeled is allowed unless you're a resident and then you have to park it in the pub car park.
Even the bus isn't allowed there. Visiting? You have to get off the bus stop and walk through the visitor centre down into the village.If you have something heavy to deliver,you have to put it on a sledge and it will be lowered down or hauled up... Very bizarre

So what weird and odd places are in your neck of the woods?

how is that a street?! lol that is awesome though.. Weird places near where I used to live used to be either Paradise road just outside of jefferson Wisconsin due to a story of it being haunted from a witch living in the road and killing little children way back when..

And in that entire area is something called the beast of bray road which is basically a werewolf.

[MoonCat]

There's a place in NY state called Panama Rocks. You can Google it. There are these weird rock formations that cause sounds to echo and seem to be coming from all around you. It's a lot like a maze. You can be standing among these rocks a couple hundred feet from the parking area, able to hear people talking, but not be able to follow the sound of voices to find your way out of the rocks.

There's a lot of very cool plants, birds and critters to be seen as well, but the rocks are the big draw.

[mathnerd]

In my hometown of Homestead, Florida, there's a castle made entirely out of coral rock called (unimaginatively) the Coral Castle. Just that much is weird, but the story behind how and why it was built is even weirder. You can google it if you're interested, but I highly recommend to anybody traveling to Miami to make the 45 minute or so drive down to Homestead to see it.

[wolfie]

The village is traffic free-nothing wheeled is allowed unless you're a resident and then you have to park it in the pub car park.
Even the bus isn't allowed there.

Interesting - I wonder how they handle certain situations. Does the ambulance have to park on the edge of town while the paramedics run to the patient's house? What about the fire department? Also, are disabled people allowed to have wheelchairs?

[AnaKhouri]

I live near the Gate to Hell.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_M...7s_Music_World

I've been a few times, I don't particularly like C&W music but it's a fun place to hang out. Never saw a ghost though. Also, never been attacked by a ghost either, so I have that going for me.

I also live near here:

http://www.cincymuseum.org/union-terminal

If you ever saw the old Superfriends cartoon, you'll recognize this old railway station as being the inspiration for the Hall of Justice.

mathnerd- I've always wanted to see Coral Castle!

[April]

OH I forgot about Bishops Castle. This is an hour or so away from me. Essentially, some guy decided to start building a castle in the mountains. He's halfway crazy and has been fighting with the government for ever. But he has build this castle on his own and there is a giant dragon! This place will TOTALLY work out your legs. I hurt SO bad the day after I visited here

http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/2047

[Kit-Ginevra]

Interesting - I wonder how they handle certain situations. Does the ambulance have to park on the edge of town while the paramedics run to the patient's house? What about the fire department? Also, are disabled people allowed to have wheelchairs?

I think for emergencies the rules may be suspended.... As for wheelchairs....
This is the main street You ain't going up or down that in a wheelchair or an ambulance or a fire engine...I assume you park your emergency vehicle in the pub car park and run it up the hill...and then your firemen and paramedics or your injured person get sent up or down or sledges...or on donkeys...

[Geek King]

I live near the Gate to Hell.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_M...7s_Music_World


I also live near here:

http://www.cincymuseum.org/union-terminal

What, you're not going to mention the flying pig statues?

[AccountingDrone]

I think for emergencies the rules may be suspended.... As for wheelchairs....
This is the main street You ain't going up or down that in a wheelchair or an ambulance or a fire engine...I assume you park your emergency vehicle in the pub car park and run it up the hill...and then your firemen and paramedics or your injured person get sent up or down or sledges...or on donkeys...

In the right power chair that would be a snap. There is a Bounder that does 11 MPH/17.5 KmPH. Just put the knobbly tires on it instead of the slicks.

[AnaKhouri]

What, you're not going to mention the flying pig statues?

I'm not a fan of cities, so I don't get across the river very often.

[Sunshine]

We have a town near (relatively, Texas is big) called Marfa that has lights that float in the air...like the aurora Borealis but not. And big bend national park....beautiful. There is another town about two hours from here that has a natural spring fed lake. Constant temperature. Its great to visit in the heat of the summer.

[Seshat]

Hanging Rock: a special kind of volcanic rock that's .. well, foam-rock. Like pumice, but a different substance. The whole mountain (well, volcanic-plug-mountain-remnant) consists of this stuff.
There's a film 'Picnic at Hanging Rock' with some wonderful footage of the place.


There's a place where there's these amazing pink hills (mini-hills?), where during our gold-rush era, people used to essentially power-wash the hills looking for gold. Essentially these pink hills are tailings, I guess, but they're gorgeous to look at. And very 60s-era sci-fi looking.


There's the longest war memorial in the world (according to the website about it): the 'Great Ocean Road'; a road between Melbourne and Adelaide. Returning soldiers were given employment by their platoon (if that's the right word) being assigned a section of the road to build. Some of the villages along the road were already there, others basically got their start by being the camp for one or more of the road-building platoons.


Much of the Great Ocean Road goes past areas which are national, federal, or world heritage reserves. In one of those, there's this amazing cave.
The rock along the coast between Melbourne and Adelaide is being gradually eroded; much of it is sedimentary, and thus fairly vulnerable to erosion. Sometimes this results in a cave formation which is a kind of L shape: a narrow inlet, a right angle curve, and a larger cave. Very rarely, the larger cave becomes so eroded that the ceiling caves in.
That's what happened at this particular cave. The geologists have fenced the surface to show where it's reasonably safe for visitors to stand. You can see each wave rush into the cave, bounce around, partially retreat, and get swamped by the next wave that rushes in.
Apparently this particular cave existed during the European colonisation of Australia: a ship wrecked near it, and the people trying to rescue survivors and find bodies could look down into the cave and see flotsam - and unretrievable bodies.
The bodies that could be retrieved and buried (because they didn't end up in that cave) are buried in a graveyard near the cave.



The Southern Ocean itself.
Unlike the Arctic, no continents touch Antarctica. The closest point is the tip of South America; the next closest would be the southeast tip of Australia, then Africa.
(For islands: Tierra del Fuego archipeligo at South America, the South Island of New Zealand, and Australia's Tasmania. There are a couple of isolated islands: one southeast of NZ, for example, but no other large or large-ish land masses.)

This causes the Southern Ocean's dominant current to be circumpolar. It just keeps going around and around and around Antarctica, getting colder and colder as it does.
Some of the water mixes with the South Pacific, the South Atlantic, the Indian oceans; but there's always that dominant current.
This has significant effects, of course, on the climates of the neighbouring land masses; and on all travellers - surface or air - in the region.

It also means the southern ocean has unique sea critters. Sydney's Aquarium is focussed on Southern Pacific creatures; but if you want to see Southern Ocean critters, come to Melbourne.
(I don't know if Adelaide or Perth have civic scientific Aquaria, if they do I would expect Adelaide's to be Southern Ocean as well, and Perth's probably South-East Indian Ocean.)

[Kit-Ginevra]

if you want to see Southern Ocean critters, come to Melbourne Newcastle High Street on a Friday night.

Fixed for ya