Ever since it appeared Google Maps has been in my top ten of most useful maps. Recently however Microsoft’s rival Live Maps has started to creep in there as well. They’re relatively similar in all respects: they both provide basic street mapping and also the option to overlay it with fairly high resolution satellite images of many areas of the world. Both of them also offer very good direction advice and route searches that blow the venerable old multimap out of the water. They do differ however in a couple of their respective features.
Google Maps offers the ability to see the location of things in the world with Wikipedia entries and link directly to them. It also provides access to millions of user photographs relevant to the area being viewed or searched for. In keeping with their philosophy the Google Maps API is widely available and seems to be popping up on every site that could conceivably have a use for a map.
The Live Maps lack these features but they do have one facet that I find immensely enjoyable to play with. They can display a seamless aerial photograph of the area you are viewing in remarkably high detail as well.
Some time ago I was tracing the course of the Forth and Clyde canal on Google Maps trying to figure out why it seemed to stop in the middle of Port Dundas. I was fairly ignorant of much of the geography of the northern side of Glasgow at the time so I was surprised to learn that it was a dead end branch that went to Port Dundas and not the canal proper. Following the canal north from the Maryhill Locks I spotted something strange around the back of Cadder in the north of the city.
I’ve ringed it on this picture from Google Maps:
It’s not particularly clear but it looks like the mouth of a tunnel hidden away on a big lump of waste ground. If you look closely just north of it there’s what appears to be an old footbridge over the Anniesland railway line as well.
You can get a better idea of where this tunnel is from a wider map view:
I’ve long had this one filed under curiosities that I’d like to investigate but my natural caution far outweighs my curiosity. Cadder isn’t exactly renowned as a tourist friendly area of the city and the tunnel/bridge itself look to be the kind of thing that’s acted as a den for the local neds since the canal was built. My curiosity has recently been reignited by the discovery that Live Map’s aerial photography now covers almost all of Glasgow including the strange tunnel:
If you look closely you can just about see a stonework archway hidden amongst the undergrowth in this picture. It seems quite far away from the canal but the presence of the footbridge and worn paths suggest that it might still be accessible to a degree but the picture doesn’t really give a hint of it’s function. I know that the large Scottish Water offices nearby are built on what was once a substantial railway goods yard. I wonder if this is an abandoned railway tunnel or maybe a forgotten footway from Cadder to Maryhill.
GreyKodiak 
