Wander
Armchair Travel
Street-view wandering, city walks, live webcams and the small miracle of standing on a road eight thousand kilometres away for free.
13 sites
The largest archive of 360 panoramas anywhere, pinned to a world map and free to browse, covering plenty of places no Street View car reached.
- 10 min
- Desktop
Aerial 360 panoramas shot from helicopters and drones over volcanoes, cathedrals and Antarctic ice, most of them enormous files worth the wait.
- 10 min
Dashcam footage of a city loop with the local radio playing over it, so you can drive slowly through Istanbul while answering email.
- <1 min
- Sound on
- Desktop
Thousands of public webcams pointed at squares, harbours, volcanoes and building sites, some with archives stretching back decades.
- <1 min
The game that made the genre: dropped into Street View, guess where on the globe you are. The free tier is thin these days.
- 10 min
The whole planet in 3D in a browser tab, with guided Voyager tours for when you would rather be told where to look than choose.
- 10 min
- Desktop
Drops you on a random road somewhere on Earth in Street View and leaves you to work out where you are, or simply wander off down it.
- <1 min
- Desktop
Street-level photography stitched together from volunteers' dashcams and phones, covering a great many roads no Google car ever drove down.
- 10 min
- Desktop
A free street-view guessing game with unlimited rounds, built for people unwilling to pay a monthly subscription to look at roads.
- 10 min
- Desktop
One button, one random inhabited spot on Earth in Street View, most of them somewhere nobody would ever have chosen to look.
- <1 min
- Desktop
Live HD cameras on piazzas, beaches and ski slopes across Europe and beyond, which is the closest a browser tab gets to a day trip.
- <1 min
City walking videos, driving tours and a guess-the-city game built on top of them, sorted by country for when you cannot travel.
- 10 min
- Desktop
Live webcams sorted by country and theme, from Alpine passes to Caribbean beach bars, with a great many pointed at completely empty roads.
- <1 min
How we picked these
Every entry in Detour is hand-sorted rather than scraped: filed under one category, given one to three moods, and placed in a time band for how quickly it pays off. The practical facts — cost, sign-up, sound, device and whether it is safe at a desk — are recorded per site and shown on every card, so you can rule things out before you click.
Armchair Travel: questions
How many sites are in Armchair Travel?
13 sites, each hand-sorted by category, mood and how long it takes to pay off.
Which of these sites are free with no sign-up?
12 of the 13 are free and need no account. 1 is paid or freemium, and the card says so.
Do these sites work on a phone, and are they safe for work?
5 of 13 work on a phone; the rest are desktop only. 13 are safe for work and 12 work with the sound off.