Over the last few days my social media connections have been buzzing with links to the new Google Street View service which now allows viewers to look back at earlier iterations of the graphic map dating back to 2008.

It is fleetingly amusing to look at the different shades of paint on my front door; explore my favourite closed chip shops, in their heyday and see my local  Bakery before it's fancy re-design ...

... even to reminded oneself of how The Step used to be Henley's Bap...

But it is the bigger differences that are really fascinating - even in such a short time major changes have happened locally - look below for example to see how the North circular has developed:

    As time goes on, and the further we get from the first round of images, the more fascinating this resource will become.

A short video from Google introducing the service was published last week and shows how it can be accessed: