FINALLY – you can take a stroll around your neighbourhood without even leaving your armchair.

Internet giant Google yesterday upgraded Swindon on its Google Maps service to give a street-eye level of the town.

The new Street View service – now expanded across much of the UK – means you can wander around Swindon’s streets and enjoy a panoramic view via your computer.

You can ride roughshod across the Magic Roundabout, check out who’s been hanging around outside bars and loiter about the perimeter of the County Ground.

People can use the service to make travel plans, arrange meeting points or just get to know their town better.

During the past two years, a black Vauxhall Astra car emblazoned with the Google logo, has been seen in Swindon recording street scenes from a camera attached to its roof.

But some believe the technology is an invasion of privacy.

Google has been forced to remove some images from its national Street View, including a man leaving a sex shop and an office worker who was having a cigarette by a No Smoking sign.

A spokesman for Google said: “Google has gone to great lengths to safeguard privacy, while allowing computer users to benefit from the feature.

“It only contains imagery that is already visible from public roads and features technology that blurs both faces and licence plates.”

In total, almost 238,000 miles of public road are now available on the Street View programme throughout the UK.

“It has been launched in 20 different countries, including the US, Canada and Brazil.

“It’s a fantastic resource which can be used in so many different ways.

“Some people are using Street View to plan trips where they’ve never been before and we have found others are using the service to house hunt.

“They are looking for nearby parks and schools before finding an appropriate location.

“We launched this in 25 UK cities in March last year and now this has been rolled out for almost all of the UK.”

A YouGov poll of 2,000 people February 24 and 26 this year looked at how people in the UK are using Street View.

It shows almost two thirds have used it for directions to places, one third to look at places in other countries and one in five people have used it for house-hunting.

Ed Parsons, Google’s geospatial technologist, said: “Street View takes mapping to a level not possible before.”

When Google’s cameras headed out to capture Stonehenge, filming was done on board a custom-built off-road tricycle.