Tacky Or What???

@ninalanyon It's by the NE-bound side not far North of the Avon Bridge; but partially obscured by trees on both sides of it, so you don't have much more than a fairly brief glimpse of it in a small road-side clearing. It stands out by its colour, but this weekend, more so thanks to all the lights and stuff on it.

Because my eyes and mind are on the road and traffic more than scenery I can't quite recall in detail but I think it's on the first hill up the valley-side. It's certainly well before you reach the Almondsbury Interchange approach, where anyway I am normally already taking the two outer lanes for the M5 Northwards.

@ArishMell Thanks, I'll try to remember to keep an eye out for it next time. I tried searching the web for it and couldn't find it. Did find a white fibreglass camel though:
Apparently between junctions 23 and 24 (Bridgwater). I haven't noticed him either!

@ninalanyon ooh, I've not seen that. I don't usually use that bit of the road though.

The poor wicker man a bit nearer to Taunton used to be in splendid isolation, but he's now camouflaged by a load of buildings.

I doubt the tank is mentioned on the Internet - well, until we did.

It appears on Google Earth though!

I have just tried it!

Pick up the Avonmouth crossing, then reduce the scale bar as much as you can without the image breaking up. I managed to bring it down to 20m while retaining clarity, at least on my PC monitor. I can identify shipping-containers as those, on it.

Follow the M5 NE from the river, under the green-painted railway bridge, then under a road bridge; until you start to see what look like motor-cycle scrambles tracks to the left, screened from the motorway by a band of trees and shrubs. Carefully scroll up further, to presumably the bike-club building (low, with a flat, metal roof) and car-park.

The tank then appears very distinctly in a small break in that band of trees, by the car-park. Its appearance as an isolated reddish-orange rectangle in the hedge is the give-away if you can't obtain such fine resolution.

If you have started to see the lane-division arrows for the junction ahead, you've gone too far.

@Piper Quite!

I found it on Google Earth photos yesterday, as in what look like the grounds of a motorcycle scramble club hidden from the road by trees.

It's pointless anyway. It is in a hedge next to the site' car-park, not the buildings, all on private land; and the road users cannot stop to examine it.

'
Perhaps it's no worse though than what has been allowed elsewhere by planners who should know better, along the M5 and M6. These are the giant video-type illuminated advertising hoardings above Oldbury Viaduct and near the M5/M6 junction; and the painted advertisements on old lorry trailers, spoiling the gentle Cheshire countryside.

One of the latter is a quote from the Q'ran! May Allah strike them all with lightning - starting with the electronic displays near Birmingham.

The electronic displays are slightly lessened in the day by the background, a sprawling industrial estate. Ironically that has been slowly improving its appearance over the years, and even contains a lot of big, mature trees. (Shhh! Don't tell the property-developers. They hate trees!) At night though, the signs are bright, changing masses of coloured lights; distracting, even masking legitimate road-signs that should be the only ones there.

Also ironically these electronic advertising signs are new developments that go against the growing concerns about "energy" and road use. They are as tacky as that decorated tank and the motorway service-areas' gimmicks; even the smaller ones on bus-shelters probably run at least at a kW each, 24 hours a day every day; and are just not necessary.


Why so early for Christmas decorations anyway?

Last week a near-neighbour household replaced its awful plastic pumpkins and bats ( the imported, supposedly Hallowe'en, pseudo-"tradition" invented and pushed by American commerce) with Christmas decorations not much better, in barely the second week of November!