A few days ago, I was re-watching an episode of Endeavor (S4 E4 – “Harvest“), the prequel to Morse. In this episode, a man goes missing near a nuclear power plant. I decided to look for the nuclear facility on Google Maps, and found that the actual facility was the Fawley Power Station, a decommissioned (2013) “oil-fired” power plant located near Portsmouth & Southampton, UK. See below for closeup of Fawley Control Building (round like a space ship).
I love Google StreetView and how I can walk/ride the streets, not just in Los Angeles or America, but in Germany, Poland, Greece, and the World, online, and come away with a sense of actually having been to a place before ever going there. And most of the places, I will never actually visit.
So I used StreetView to look around the Fawley Station area. The next day, I revisited this StreetView and there was a new option. Someone had actually walked along the lower fence. The aerial view had revealed that there were many large wind turbine blades stored on the premises (MHI Vestas).
There was also a man-made channel and a barge moored here. I figured that the wind-turbine blades had been hauled on the water. I later found a image that answered two questions: the blades were quite a bit longer than the length of the barge, and, there was a low hanging foot bridge crossing the channel which would have hindered a tall barge from entering.
For the short of it visit Fawley Waterside. You can see the demolition of the power plant facility and the dreams for a new water side community.
I zoomed out of the area to get an idea of where the Fawley area was located. Relatively nearby was the Isle of Wight. Now when I saw the name, I knew the name, but I knew nothing about the Isle of Wight. So, I looked for a town and found Newport basically in the center of the island. MHI Vestas Offshore facility on the Isle of Wight.
I zoomed in on Newport and switched to StreetView and began to ride down a few of the streets in the old part of town. I say, “old part” of town because I soon found myself going past what appeared to be a small mall and detached at one end was a Kentucky Fried Chicken. I drove past and there were some people sitting in a booth and one was waving at the Google camera car.
Not sure why, but I decided to view the mini-mall (Coppins Bridge Retail & Leisure Park) more intensely.
I zoomed in on the “Back to School” add on the window and wondered if the Pukka Pad was some new electronic toy.
Office Outlet (Staples) and googling found, “Nine Redundancies As Isle Of Wight Office Outlet Announces Closure“. So, Office Outlet had been gone for about a year. What might have filled the space? The Gym and Burger King.
Suggested Burger King Layout
Maplin | the Electronics Specialists
So, this morning, I catch a glimpse of “the Isle of Wight” and “CORONA Virus… What a small world.
UK to test contact tracing app on Isle of Wight – Coronavirus Daily Update UK
Most, if not all of the Fawley Power Station has been demolished. There is a neat video of them imploding and bringing down the tall smoke stack, and the generator building just in front of it (two separate events).
And, finally it dawned on me to actually look closer at Southampton, UK. The Port of Southampton wasn’t important when I first started looking at the Fawley Power Plant (Endeavor episode). Isle of Wight became important because a wind power generation company located on the Isle of Wight was storing some of their wind mill blades at the Fawley Power Plant location.
But now, Southampton is one of the ports in a circuit made by the cargo ships of the Independent Container Line. But why focus on ICL? Well, I happened to see the “Independent Future” while she was on the Cape Fear River (Port of Wilmington, NC). At first, I didn’t know that the “Independent” part of her name was actually the name of the company that owned her. See the link above for pictures of the cargo vessels owned by ICL, and aerial views of the ports that are included in the circuit… Wilmington, NC — Antwerp, BE — Southampton, UK — Cork, IR — Chester, PA — Wilmington, NC…
I was using the maritime app to look at vessels near Southampton, and happened to see a vessel in the Fawley Power Station channel. Sure enough, it was the barge used to ferry wind turbine blades from the Isle of Wight (where they are manufactured) and storage at the Fawley location. I don’t recall if I noted the name of the barge, long ago, but seeing it on the maritime app, “Mtb Blade Runner Two” made me check the photo I had of the barge with one wind turbine blade. Sure enough, if you zoom in on that picture, the name is written on the bow of the barge.