Talk:Geography of Wales

New map
Thanks for the effort IP, but sorry, I'm not much happier with the new map than I was with the old one. It seems to show principal areas in different tones of grey (but why? - we already have a map showing those areas more clearly), national parks (Snowdonia looks to have very inaccurate boundaries - see this, for example), and some towns, some of which (Holyhead, Rhyl) are wrongly located, and no towns are shown in the Valleys (main centre of population). Also, no topography is shown, and no rivers. The coastline and England boundary are shown more accurately than before, which is good. Thanks, but further work needed I think. I'll copy both maps (old and new) to this page for ease of comparison. Ghmyrtle (talk) 16:02, 1 December 2008 (UTC) PS: There's also a typo in Pembrokeshire.

"Peninsula"...?
The opening line says "Wales comprises a peninsula...." Does it? A "peninsula" is somewhere that is (literally) almost an island - it sticks out into the sea. Wales doesn't - it's an irregularly shaped western part of the island, but the north-south distance along the border with England is much greater than its east-west width (except perhaps in the south). This wording is used in other articles as well, but I think it should be improved. If others agree in principle, it should be possible to agree a more suitable wording. Ghmyrtle (talk) 20:54, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Quite agree. Any suggestion? Daicaregos (talk) 20:57, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
 * How about: "Wales comprises a generally hilly area on the western side of central southern Great Britain, between the Irish Sea to the north and the Bristol Channel to the south." Subsequent sentences would need to be changed as well, but how is that for an opener?  Ghmyrtle (talk) 21:02, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I would prefer mountainous to hilly. Pretty good otherwise. Daicaregos (talk) 21:30, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Hmm...not sure. It's certainly mountainous in some parts (Snowdonia, Brecon Beacons), but is it generally mountainous?  I'd say it was generally hilly, with some mountains and some flatter and lower parts.  Anyway: "Wales comprises a generally [hilly/mountainous] area on the western side of central southern Great Britain, between the Irish Sea to the north and the Bristol Channel to the south, together with offshore islands of which the largest is Anglesey. It is a country of the United Kingdom, and borders England to the east. It is about 274 km from north to south and at least 97 km wide, with a total area of 20779 km2.  It has over 1200 km of coastline."  Ghmyrtle (talk) 21:41, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
 * The physical description of Wales in the ONS UK Yearbook 2005 is:"Wales is on the western side of Great Britain. It is mountainous – around one-quarter is above 305 metres and in the north its highest peak, Snowdon (Yr Wyddfa), rises to 1,085 metres. The Cambrian Mountains run from north to south and to the south are the Brecon Beacons, with flat, grassy summits, and the steep-sided South Wales Valleys. The Welsh coastline varies from estuaries to sheltered bays, high cliffs, peninsulas, and marsh and low-tide sandbanks."--Pondle (talk) 22:00, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
 * The Met Office has it: “Wales is a mainly mountainous country with much of the land being over 150 metres.” Wording agreed for the Wales article introduction is suitable for the subsequent sentences here: “It is a country that is part of the United Kingdom, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west.” Daicaregos (talk) 22:25, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
 * OK. How about:"'Wales is a generally mountainous country on the western side of central southern Great Britain, between the Irish Sea to the north and the Bristol Channel to the south. It is part of the United Kingdom, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It is about 274 km from north to south and at least 97 km wide, with a total area of 20779 km2.  It has over 1200 km of coastline, and includes offshore islands of which the largest is Anglesey.'"
 * Ghmyrtle (talk) 22:44, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
 * A definite improvement to the current intro. Daicaregos (talk) 06:46, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Done, with a couple of tweaks. If people like it, it can be rolled out into other articles where appropriate.  Ghmyrtle (talk) 09:03, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Fine by me. Unless you think the Celtic Sea should be included too. Daicaregos (talk) 10:39, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Rewriting this article
I am rewriting this article as part of the Awaken the Dragon project. I have already rewritten the section previously named "Topography and geology", substituting the section headings " Physical geography" and "Geology". I intend next to expand and better-reference "Land use", "Political geography" and "Climate".

I propose to further remodel the article on the lines of the Geography of Ireland article which is an FA. I intend to remove some of the listy sections such as "National Parks", "Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty", "Waterfalls" and "Lakes and Reservoirs". Any comments on my plans would be welcome. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 11:05, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

You're certainly on the right track, if you can make it about the same sort of length overall and format to the Irish one it'll definitely be fine, that's exactly the sort of article I was thinking of. I think for Wales though it would be good to have more detail on the mountains and rivers than you see in the Irish one. Some of the sections are a bit short in that article, meatier ones are preferred. But overall more detail could come later after the contest should you wish to get it to FA status. Yes, we want to rid of the listy sections and find a way of mentioning a few of them in decent, readable prose. Similar sorts of sections are relevant but only if done with decent prose and subtle examples rather than ugly bulled lists. Just follow the Ireland one and you can't go wrong. It would probably be easier for you to just nuke or partly nuke certain sections and just write them from scratch. I encourage that, it's quicker, and more reliable that you've fully verified the material yourself. Thankyou for taking it on!♦ Dr. Blofeld  12:05, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Lead
Congratulations on a well deserved GA.

Just two points on the Lead: firstly, the initial sentence still sounds rather odd. I propose we go with the intro used on the Wales article, which was arrived at by mediation i.e. Wales (Cymru) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east, the Irish Sea to its north and west, and the Bristol Channel to its south.;

and secondly, the length of Wales' coastline here (over 1200 km) differs to that noted in the Wales article (over 1680 mi). Coastline was discussed at Talk:Wales here. I have no view as to which figure is 'correct', if there is such a thing, but we should be consistent. Daicaregos (talk) 12:35, 25 April 2016


 * Thank you, that is a good point you raise. I believe all articles in the chain should have consistency in such basic facts., could you look into this? Sainsf  &lt;^&gt; Feel at home 12:49, 25 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Thank you for bringing up that point. I have found a good source for the length of the coastline and the figure used before was way off. I have also rephrased the opening sentence as suggested. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 17:56, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

Language
The article needs to include something about the geographical distribution of the two languages.

Also, regarding the areas of the lakes,

(a) do we have a good source for the precise area of Llyn Tegid to substantiate the claim that it is still the largest lake? I suspect that the area varies materially depending on the water level.

(b) it would be preferable to input the areas in km2 (to one decimal place) and then convert it to sq miles, as doing the opposite creates too large rounding errors.Ehrenkater (talk) 21:27, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

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"Most of Wales is mountainous..."
Is that really true? Most of Wales is hilly, and parts are mountainous - but most is not, in my view. Sources for the existing statement? Checking above, I see I raised this before. But I still don't think it's right, and it gives a false impression to non-locals. Ghmyrtle (talk) 08:48, 13 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I'd have to concur! And indeed much of upland Wales might reasonably described as moorland.Geopersona (talk) 19:28, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

Length of the Welsh coast
Two issues here: i) the given reference in what is presently the 5th para of the Physical geography section no longer works - it just takes you to the homepage of the BCS and conducting a search there on Welsh coastline yields no results. ii) as editors who have approached this topic before will well know, given coastline lengths (anywhere) are almost meaningless without further qualification (see How Long Is the Coast of Britain? Statistical Self-Similarity and Fractional Dimension) cheers Geopersona (talk) 06:18, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

Merger proposal
I propose merging Geography and identity in Wales into Geography of Wales. The content in Geography and identity in Wales could quite easily be replicated and summarised as a sub-section in Geography of Wales and it could be confusing to readers to have two similarly-named articles. As the first article is about 12 years old I thought I'd open a discussion rather than do it anyway. Bonoahx (talk) 12:40, 7 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Comment. About 12 years ago (!!), there was some discussion at Talk:Geography and identity in Wales, about the possible expansion and renaming of that page - to, say, Social geography of Wales, or Regional identity within Wales - but nothing was done and I'd forgotten about it.  The existing article is not good, but there is certainly an article - or section - to be written, with good sources, about regional identity within Wales, in social, linguistic, and other terms.  In an ideal world, that would be written as a freestanding article.  But we are not in an ideal world.  Ghmyrtle (talk) 14:27, 7 March 2022 (UTC)
 * ✅ Klbrain (talk) 04:51, 29 August 2022 (UTC)