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Britain's largest islands

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 philluu 28 Jun 2018

Thought this was pretty interesting

https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/blog/2018/06/britains-largest-islands/

Good to help understand which Scottish islands are the most mountainous, but also just plain cool visualisations to be fair.

 ablackett 28 Jun 2018
In reply to philluu:

It's fairly nonsensical to attempt to measure the coastline of an island, but an interesting graphic non the less.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastline_paradox

 d_b 28 Jun 2018
In reply to ablackett:

Of course the coastline isn't completely fractal, as it doesn't really make much sense to measure beyond the scale of atoms so you eventually get a finite number of straight line segments to add up.

I'm not aware of any mapping agencies who are willing to even go this far unfortunately.

 subtle 28 Jun 2018
In reply to ablackett:

> It's fairly nonsensical to attempt to measure the coastline of an island, but an interesting graphic non the less.

Does the coastline of an island get bigger and smaller depending on the tides?

 ablackett 29 Jun 2018
In reply to subtle:

Yes - simple case - imagine a conical island, tide comes in then it has a smaller coastline.

 Phil Anderson 29 Jun 2018
In reply to ablackett:

I seem to remember an episode of QI mentioning that the Isle of Wight was the smallest county in the UK at high tide, but not at low tide when Rutland beats it!

Whether the IoW is a county or not is a whole other question of course, although Wikipedia says this...

"The Isle of Wight is a Ceremonial and Administrative county and as it has no district councils (only the county council) it is effectively a Unitary county, though not officially. It is unique in England in this way - all other Unitary areas are single districts with no county council, while the Isle of Wight is the other way round. It also has a single Member of Parliament, and is by far the most populous constituency in the UK (more than 50% above the average of English constituencies)."

 subtle 29 Jun 2018
In reply to philluu:

> Thought this was pretty interesting

How many of them have you visited then?

 Toerag 29 Jun 2018
In reply to subtle:

Yes, especially if the seabed slope is very shallow and the tidal range high. Jersey pretty much doubles in size at low water for example.

 wintertree 29 Jun 2018
In reply to ablackett:

> It's fairly nonsensical to attempt to measure the coastline of an island, but an interesting graphic non the less.

As the Haussdorf dimension is going to be similar for all the islands it’s not nonsensical at all.  For comparative purposes the lengths will rank in the same length order regardless of the measurement length scale.

What is missing in order to properly quantify the lengths is the size of the (virtual) measurement stick used.

OP philluu 29 Jun 2018
In reply to subtle:

Personally, all the Welsh, most of the English and none (I think) of the Scottish!

It is an interesting tangent this thread has taken.

In reply to subtle:

Five of the ten biggest. Probably about the norm for most climbers based in London/South-East for most of their lives.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

12 of the 20 biggest- but only 1 of the ‘top 4’...

As a hillwalking tick list, the highest peak on each of these 82 islands would be an interesting one! 

On that count, I’ve only managed one (sgurr Alasdair on Skye) though...

Post edited at 18:38
russellcampbell 29 Jun 2018
In reply to no_more_scotch_eggs:

> As a hillwalking tick list, the highest peak on each of these 82 islands would be an interesting one! 

The Hillbagging website has a list of the high points of all the Significant Islands of Britain [SIBs].

 

In reply to no_more_scotch_eggs:

> As a hillwalking tick list, the highest peak on each of these 82 islands would be an interesting one! 

> On that count, I’ve only managed one (sgurr Alasdair on Skye) though...

But it's surely by far the finest?

 

 Matt Podd 30 Jun 2018
In reply to subtle:

15 out of the top 16, and been to the highest point of 13 of them.

 

In reply to the thread:

Quiz question then: how many of the 82 are uninhabited?

(its in the link, but that would be cheating...  and it’s less than I’d have guessed before I looked)

 subtle 02 Jul 2018
In reply to philluu:

> Personally, all the Welsh, most of the English and none (I think) of the Scottish!

Was going to say you need to broaden your horizons as you are missing out on some delights - then realised I haven't visited any of the Welsh ones so I also need to broaden my horizons!

 


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