Street View creates quite a stir

Thanks to the technology people can now browse the sites of both areas without leaving the comfort of their armchair.

While Street View has featured many areas throughout the UK including Belfast for some time, large chunks of Northern Ireland only became accessible last week.

As well as getting a kick at looking at their own homes and work places, people have also been checking out well known local landmarks.

Users can 'walk' though the streets of towns and villages throughout the area using Street View, which gives them a 360degree view from any point.

Locations available include the Giants Causeway, the Joey Dunlop Memorial Garden, the sea front at Ballycastle, and of course, the offices of the Ballymoney and Moyle Times.

Street View has also been a hit with ex-pats with one woman writing on an internet blog that seeing her old house brought a tear to her eye.

The former Ballymoney native - who left the town more than 40 years ago - now resides in Florida.

She wrote: "I love Google Street View and have used it over and over to explore many places around the world at street level from my armchair.

"It's also been invaluable for getting previews of places I'm going to, even to the point of knowing what a new friend's house looks like before I get there!

"The UK now is pretty much covered by Street View, 96% road coverage I think, but part of the missing coverage were always large parts of Northern Ireland, the country of my birth and where I solidly spent the first 18 years of my life, returning often until 2003.

"I went looking again the other day and was delighted to find that things had moved on and Northern Ireland is mostly available for Street View access.

"Even my little home town of Ballymoney is well covered and I can zoom along the streets and roads that are still so familiar to me while sitting with a cool drink in my armchair in mid Florida.

"Gotta love the internet.

"My parents moved into their first real house there (Ballymoney) together just before I was born, a rented council house on the north west side of the town.

"That would've been around 1950 and as the house only changed hands when my mother died in 2003, it had been my family home for 53 years!

"I've just travelled its length via Street View and to be honest, when I got to our house, it brought a tear to my eye.

"The outside hasn't changed a bit since I last saw it back when I was over for mum's funeral and in fact it hasn't changed much since 1952 when it first became my home.

"Understandably, I just can't think of anyone else living there and all of my family would think the same.

"As I headed back down the street, which for any years now has had a mix of council and private houses on it, I had a few major nostalgic moments.

"The tune of an ice cream van coming along the street will always take me back to my childhood as my brother and I would listen for it and then charge outside to join the small band of other eager kids lining up by the van to pick a cold treat on a warm summer's day. If the money was available and we'd been good, we could look forward to a 99, locally produced ice cream in a cone with a chocolate flake stuck into it.

"The awesome version in this photo would've been unknown to us and the stuff of dreams for a 10 year old."

The woman makes reference to the appearance of an ice cream van parked in the driveway of a house close to her former family home.

She writes: "What I would've given for that about 45 years ago! A neighbour with an ice cream van business!

"Accessing Street View can be a five minute process if you just have a specific location you'd like to explore at the closest level possible or, as is usually the case with me, it becomes an all day process taking me to different streets, different towns, different countries.

"Or as happened today, different memories."