Hi All,
I stumbled across this free prog, Google Earth, and thought it would be an excellent tool for checking out area's of interest in Spain.
Is anyone else using this prog please?

Hi there,
I tried it and was able to zoom into Calasparra the next town east to ours (Moratalla) however because not all towns are shown I was unable to get a good image of our town, though I did pick up the main road going to it.....I picked up Caravaca de la Cruz too once but 'lost' it and never got it again......mind you I never was any good at geography.....its a good tool though if you know what you're doing.....you can download the 'pro' version for 7 days free but I didn't see any difference....but like I say I was crap at geography....
Mary

I have been using this program for several months and find it very interesting.

However, most of the photographs are up to three years old and detail varies from area to area.

There is a perfect photograph of my property which is in the heart of the Andalucian countryside but the area I come from in the UK is much less well-defined.

Well worth a look, though.

I can see our house and swimming pool, the resolution is so good over our area. I spent an hour yesterday showing the Mother-in-Law the pyramids and places she'd lived in (Suez & Bermuda) and landing at Madrid airport with the children (tilt the ground a bit and scroll up while zooming in - luckily the one runway runs north/south, so you get exactly the right effect!).

Some areas don't have fully-detailed high levels of resolution and some of the coverage is quite old. I've also used it to find likely beaches for our holiday in Asturias - a couple that we'd not noticed before.

It does help if you've got some map practice and as a self-confessed map afficionado, I could easily spend days with it. It could also be very useful for spotting oddities not contained in estate agency property details.

cheers,
coralsoft

Actually, this a better program for checking out property boundaries etc in Spain, especially in the countryside.

It is based on the same photographs as Google Earth but they are only in black and white.