Panoramio

Sitting at this computer, blogging and visiting other blogs isn't all I do. Ever since it magically appeared, I have been a fan of Google Earth. Not only can you use this amazing facility to zoom around the world and focus in on particular places, you can also leave your own photographs that may or may not be specially selected for inclusion in Google Earth by the web photo hosting agency - Panoramio. I think it's fantastic that ordinary photographers like me can leave their own photo-illustrations of the world we live in, creating a kind of visual quilt that is gradually being stitched around our planet - becoming more complete with each passing day.

I have more than fifty photographs within Google Earth and Panoramio keep a tally of "hits" or visits. My most popular photo had its thousandth visitor this week. I don't think it's because it's a particularly good photograph - it's more the picture's location.

It seems that forty years ago, the guitar legend Jimi Hendrix visited Morocco with some friends. They flew from Paris to Casablanca and then made their way by road to the coastal resort of Essaouira. About two miles south of the town, there is a neglected stone-built royal pavillion. It is half swallowed by the sand dunes and the Moroccan government have let it fall into ruin - after all, feeding and servicing a large peasant population on the edge of the Sahara desert is understandably a higher priority. Anyway, legend has it that Hendrix visited the pavillion. With his troupe he sat on the sands of 1969 playing guitar and smoking joints till the sun went down before returning to The Hotel des Iles where Shirley and I stayed at Eastertime 2007.

There is so much mythology about Hendrix's Morocco trip - where he stayed, who he slept with, how long he was there. I don't think we will ever know the truth but I am sure that a good number of visitors to my picture from the royal pavillion northwards to Essaouira have been drawn there because of the "Castles in the Sand" legend and the belief that Hendrix once passed an afternoon amidst those dunes singing goodbye to the sixties. Just one year later he'd be dead. Here's the picture:-