(For the View From Your Window contest, the results below exceed the content limit for Substack’s email service, so to ensure that you see the full results, click the headline above.)
From the winner of last week’s contest:
Thanks so much! I’ll gladly take two free years of the Dish.
Here’s a quick followup from our architectural sleuth in NYC:
It turns out Pope Francis is also a big fan of Antoni Gaudi’s work. This past week the Pope recognized Gaudi’s “heroic virtues” and authorized a decree declaring him “venerable” — the first step on the path to sainthood. For the next step, beatification, a verified miracle would need to be attributed to Gaudi. In my book, designing the Sagrada Familia counts.
Here’s a quick throwback from the super-sleuth known as A. Dishhead (who correctly guessed this week’s view):
Hello Chris! Last week’s Tempe window reminded me of one of my favorite A. Dishhead illustrations — the Life magazine spoof from contest #283 in Phoenix:
Anyhoo, I still play the contest each week, but in the long run I couldn’t maintain the effort to craft a unique postcard each week. I do like to think A. Dishhead pioneered the trend of players creating their own VFYW gimmick, for better or worse, so kudos to those who’ve kept at it week in and week out! Best to you and Andrew!
We miss you and the postcards! But totally understand that it’s a big commitment. And your legacy lives on through the weekly columnists and their many niches: cinema, animals, food, wine, cocktails, restaurants, musicians, videogames, AI podcasts, eco-tourism, history, historical fiction, notable figures, baseball players, architecture, ski resorts, hot springs, aerial views, public art, collages, and the VFYW Reimagined. (Subscribe to read them all.)
On to this week’s view, the cinema sleuth in Berkeley gets a flashback:
When this one hit my screen, I momentarily panicked because it resurrected haunted memories of contest #247, which offered nothing to work with but a lot of anonymous coastal greenery. But this latest window includes a tennis court. And hedgerows.
Here’s the super-sleuth in San Mateo with his “VFYW ReimaginedTM”:
In spite of being stumped, given the minimalistic view this week, I know how to make the Reimagined. There is, of course, the green green grass. Then there’s the cliff, the basketball/soccer/tennis court, the ocean/lake/river, and the cloudy sky. This all adds up to … actually, I need to add a green basketball:
From CO/NJ:
Zowie, Chris, this was a hard one. There were several moments during my search that I had resigned that my streak was going to be broken this week …
But that made the moment of discovery only so much more exhilarating. I love the thrill associated with finally identifying a view after being on the scent for a while.
I solved it through a mixture of intuition and brute force. I was pretty certain, right off, that this was a coastal area of the British Isles, and given the abundant greenery, likely Ireland, Wales, or the southwest of England (Cornwall, Devon or Dorset). My immediate thought was that the view is on a golf course, but when I searched a number of the more notable golf courses in these areas, I came up empty.
The wine geek in San Francisco also had golf on his mind:
This was a fun contest! When I saw all the green my first thought was that this was going to be a golf-related contest because of the Masters this weekend … but that was a green-herring. We are not looking at a golf course, but it’s definitely very green.
Next up, the “Intrepid Couch Traveler”:
To me this smacks of British or Irish coastal beauty, but there are too many beautiful hotels and resorts along the coasts of the British Isles for even an Intrepid Couch Traveler, with very limited time this week, to explore. I am determined to find the window next week, but for this week, a stab in the dark will have to do; Falmouth, England looks nice, so let’s try that.
Our super-sleuth in Yakima goes with “Mousehole, England? Not really, I just liked the name.” Another guesses “Mawgan Porth, UK.” Here’s Eagle Rock (who eventually got to the right place):
I saw this picture and I laughed out loud. It’s a middle finger to anyone (like me) who ever kvetched when the contest seemed too easy one week. *Chef’s kiss*. I loved this one with a passionate love.
By the way, here are some Accidentally Wes Anderson shots near our location — first, a 44-minute drive from our view:
A 90-minute drive:
The Alaskan globetrotter goes with a “proximity guess — Portballintrae, Northern Ireland”:
My winter of semi-retirement is nearing its end, so I can’t dive into a long View search and tourism suggestions this week — and I may not get back to that level of effort again till September. However, I will keep guessing and perhaps provide some fodder for your front-end collection of misses.
This feels like the Northern Irish coast in the Giant’s Causeway area, but that’s almost certainly affected by confirmation bias, because it is the only non-city, coastal area I’ve seen on the island. If I had hours to virtually cruise the coast for a Council tennis court and multi-use field next to a B&B, I could probably confirm or reject my intuition. Search engine suggestions provided me no additional hints. Probably means we’re in Wales, or Scotland, or France. Oh well, all streaks come to an end.
On the outside chance that I’m even in the right country and you need content, a hiking suggestion is the Causeway Coast Hike — a three-day trek that runs from Ballycastle to Portstewart:
This trail is part of larger network of the Ulster Way that circumnavigates Northern Ireland. It’s pretty touristy, but still quite worthy.
I’m estimating a lower number of guesses this week — maybe 60 — but I bet that 90% of those get the building and window. It will be hard to miss the court if you get to the right town.
Only 35 sleuths got to the right town, and 28 of them got the right building, and nearly all of them got the right window. So a toughie this week.
Another sleuth who guessed Northern Ireland:
Greetings from London again. I identified Barcelona last week — but failed miserably on the building. This week could be multiple locations, but I think it’s set in County Antrim, specifically at the Royal Court hotel Portrush. The window it may have been taken from is marked in red:
Portrush is a seaside resort, and it’s especially famous for its golf course: the Royal Portrush Golf club. My American friend Richard, a very keen golfer, tells me he has “almost” played there. It has two links courses, and the British Open has been held on the Dunluce links — first in 1951 (winner Max Faulkner ) and the second in 2019 (winner Shane Lowry). It’s also near a World Heritage Site: the Giants Causeway, with its hexagonal columns that rise from the sea.
One more bid for Northern Ireland comes from the super-sleuth in Bethlum
Three weeks in a row when I have not been able to pinpoint the spot. I’m losing my touch. This one has me yearning for the auld sod, but we could be so many places, and I don’t have the bandwidth to spend the time this week. Northern Ireland?
My open tabs at one point had at least 34 devoted to possible leads. My kids cringe when they see my screen when I am on the hunt — and this is not the worst:
Sail on without me this week.
Scotland is singled out by the super-sleuth in Riverwoods:
Dunns Head, Scotland? I’m on a cold streak with the contest and not happy about it, hoping for an easy one soon :)
Easy ones can be crushing for my workweek, especially during this insane period of news, but I’ll serve up an easier one soon! From our super-sleuth on Park Avenue:
Well, this one immediately said Ireland/Scotland/Wales, and maybe the English coast near Cornwall. But that is a lot of coast. I initially thought that in the distance over the rising promontory it might be Skellig Michael Island in Kerry, so I looked around there — no luck.
Then I decided that there can’t be that many cliffside tennis courts in the UK or Ireland, and a few Google searches proved me right. Looks like a cool place, although I do suspect that the glorious sunny days shown in the photos on the websites may be few and far between, particularly in winter.
Here’s the aerial view from Chini:
From the “chagrinned sleuth in Sagaponack”:
Chris, well played. I surrender! My best guess is it’s somewhere on the UK or Irish coast, but I couldn’t find any foothold, and that’s an awful lot of coastline to peruse. My hearty congrats to those super-sleuths who found it!
One of them is Giuseppe in Rome:
I started looking for every little peninsula on the coast of the British Isles and checking Google Street View to see what they look from the ground, but I soon realized the insanity of this method. So I threw everything I had into Google search — tennis basketball court cliff sea United Kingdom OR Ireland — and I found the place in a few seconds.
A previous winner names the right country:
Well ... this week I had a “flash answer” again: IRELAND.
Then the quest to find out where! My first (really bad guess) was somewhere in County Galway, looking out at Iishhmor in the Aran Islands. I forgot how rocky it is in Galway and Mayo, of course, so that was a non-runner. Then off to County Clare, looking at the Aran Island from the south. Nothing. Then to County Waterford — perhaps the Cliff House Hotel in Ardmore? Nope.
Then I thought it has to be on the “Wild Atlantic Way,” as a VFYW reader spent St. Patrick’s week in Ireland. That proved to be a lot of fruitless work. After putting in a few hours, the biggest smile I had was a nudist beach highlighted along the coast of Wales! For 99% of the year, it’s so cold that all the guys on that beach would be walking around with two belly buttons!
I did do some great “road trips” this week:
But in the end, I have no idea.
My first real roadtrip through Ireland was right through the middle — from Ballyvaughan (a coastal village near Galway where my college girlfriend was going to art school) to Dublin. Here’s a pic from that city, back when my Irish-like hair was much redder:
The super-sleuth in West Orange heads off the coast:
Well, we’re in the North Atlantic, that’s for sure. (Watch it be New Zealand.)
(Hang on — is it New Zealand? Cape Farewell does look kind of right?? No no, too late to be doing that.)
Are we on Clare Island, County Mayo, Ireland? I know it’s wrong, because the building doesn’t match, but I really want us to be at Clare Island Lighthouse — an absolutely lovely cliffside/seaside hotel off the coast of Ireland that I found through a Reddit thread containing recommendations of, handily enough, Irish hotels with a “rugged ocean view”:
I bounced between Ireland and the Faroe Islands, but ultimately I feel most confident with Ireland, and so I’ll cast my lot there in the hope that proximity counts.
Incidentally, there’s a very neat little cliffside hotel in the Faroe Islands called “The View.” Regrettably it’s also wrong, or we could have had the “View from The View” this week!
Here’s CO/NJ again, naming the right county in Ireland:
After scrutinizing the view, I realized there really was nothing there to suggest an actual golf course; the fairway-looking features were really just pastures separated by hedgerows. With virtually nothing in the photo to search on, save a tennis court, I decided to fly over the aforementioned coastlines looking for the most prominent feature of hedgerow-demarcated pastures. ...
