Talk:List of rivers of Wales

Naming of rivers
The list in its current state seems to be an uneasy mix of both Welsh names and English names. Major rivers such as the River Wye/Afon Gwy and the Afon Tywi/River Towy are commonly referred to by either name depending on the language preference of the speaker and indeed both versions appear on the face of the modern Ordnance Survey map. Minor river names will tend to appear in Welsh only. Has any convention been agreed for Wikipedia purposes on this matter? Geopersona (talk) 05:28, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Any progress elsewhere on this issue re Welsh v English names? I know this is the English Wikipedia and that English names should generally be used - easy in the case of River Wye v. Afon Gwy but not so easy when it comes to minor river names in the more Welsh-speaking parts of Wales where the watercourse may normally be referred to with its Welsh name and an English name may not be in common currency. It's easy to make one up - just swap Afon for River or Nant for Stream/Brook - but that's hardly an encyclopaedic approach and will be seen by many (myself included) as quite unsatisfactory! cheers Geopersona (talk) 07:07, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Name of river Wen
The link to Afon Wen which is a tributary of Afon Mawddach goes to a hamlet of the same name (which is also similar to the name of another village). There is also a Wen River in China and I think also a River Wen in England (based on Google search). Any suggestions on naming of pages to remove confusion?--Traveler100 (talk) 11:49, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Subdivision of page
I would find it helpful myself (and hence assume others might) to divide the list further so that major catchments such as the Tywi, Usk, Wye and the Severn (for example) had their own editable sections. This ought not to break the flow (pun half-intended). Smaller catchments with smaller numbers of named watercourses could be sensibly accommodated in groups in such an approach. It would for consistency though, want to be followed in the other 'rivers of' pages, at least for the UK (and Ireland?). Any thoughts? Geopersona (talk) 06:44, 28 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I've been bold and subdivided the list using catchments. I think the lists are easier to use now but if others differ the changes can always be reversed. Geopersona (talk) 21:01, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
 * That looks fine to me - a useful improvement.  Velela  Velela Talk 21:49, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Afon Bran, Anglesey
Anyone know where this watercourse is on Anglesey - or if it exists at all? I've retained it for the while under 'other' but can't find it on the 1:25K map to locate it in the listing. Geopersona (talk) 05:28, 18 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I have done a check and I suspect it is a mistype for the second Afon Braint at Llanfairpwll (rather than at Dwyran) so I have removed it. I have also added in a number of missing streams gathered from the 1:25000 OS map and have taken the liberty of including the Nant Meigan which is not included on the OS map but which is bigger than many OS rivers and I suspect was omitted because of the difficulty in including the name amongst all the other cartographical details in Beaumaris.  Velela  Velela Talk 10:25, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thw two Braint's are odd; one entering the sea near LlanfairPG and the other at Dwyran as you've already shown - but they also seem to be connected in the vicinity of the change in direction of the more easterly of the two. The drainage of Anglesey is a rather confused affair, especially when viewed through the prism of the 1:25K map! Geopersona (talk) 20:33, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Headwaters of River Rheidol
How do we tease apart the headwaters of the Afon Rheidol which flow into Nant-y-moch Reservoir? What flows into what? Modern and historic mapping at 25K and 50K scale don't help much. The wider issue of how to deal with multiple inflows into lakes in this list is one that concerns me. It's more of an issue for the List of rivers of Scotland of course. cheers Geopersona (talk) 07:09, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Small streams - where do we draw the line? A proposal
I have been going through the list from the Clywedog anticlockwise, asigning (L) or (R) to each tributary to signify whether it is a left-bank or right bank tributary, and clearing up a host of other issues as I go - ambiguous links, wrongly ordered tributaries, spelling mistkae etc. I got as far as the Ystwyth and encountered entries for every small stream which is named on the OS map. Now these presumably fall under the definition of Environment Agency Wales's main river list so (by the criteria set out on the English list and discussed on its talk page) are worthy of inclusion. That's fine except that potentially this page could become so long as to be utterly unmanageable (and worse in England or Scotland, there being more watercourses).

Can I propose that such small streams are confined to the pages for individual catchments and that text be added in the intro to this article to that effect.

In editing the List of rivers of Scotland recently and adding significant numbers of watercourses (many of them of very considerable size) my rule of thumb was to add only those that appeared as double-lined features on the OS 50K map, for at least a part of their length. This gives some measure of significance in the landscape though it's not completely objective. I did add one or two others where, though single-lined, there was some sensible reason for doing so eg length or cultural association and in the case of many of the Scottish islands where the streams went by the name of 'River Example' or 'Example River', together with an introductory note to explain this. Oddly, many watercourses appear more boldly on the 50K than the 25K and this can give rise to uncertainty when using either/both these maps bases as sources. I'd welcome discussion on this - an approach agreed here could/should carry over to the other national lists for Great Britain's rivers. cheers Geopersona (talk) 08:08, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Map
Only just noticed but the eastern and Western Cleddau in Pembrokeshire have been swapped around. If someone can fix this they might also try to declutter the map - there are lakes named on it which I'd suggest are not relevant and a canal in Cheshire in England amongst other curios. cheers Geopersona (talk) 20:53, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Hoylake and "In Wales"
Why does the Liverpool Bay section run from Hoylake, which is in England? I suppose there might be some rivers flowing from the Wirral into the Dee through the small area north-west of Chester, where the Welsh-English border runs about a mile north of the Dee. If there are, I think this should be noted, as it seems strange to have a region of Wales described in terms of an English town. Indeed, why Hoylake, which is ten miles from the border, rather than somewhere like Neston or Burton?

And why do the section titles apart from Anglesey include "In Wales"? Tributaries starting in England aside, it's obvious that we're talking about rivers in Wales, because that's in the title. I'd delete them but the omission of "In Wales" from the Anglesey section makes me wonder if there's some reason for it. Should it be "Mainland", instead? Dricherby (talk) 11:50, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
 * I suppose that in their lowest intertidal reaches, some minor watercourses which originate in Wirral on the English side, extend across the border into Wales and might be considered as Welsh watercourses though it's a somewhat marginal perspective. There are however none such named on the current OS 1:25K map downstream of the intertidal channel labelled as 'Denhall Gutter' in the vicinity of Neston. A few minor watercourses such as Shotwick Brook (northwest of Chester) needed yet to be added (just done it) to the equivalent English page to complete the picture - the lowermost reaches of some of these must flow through Wales given the position of the border in this area. Anyway I have replaced Hoylake with Dee Estuary. cheers Geopersona (talk) 20:17, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
 * And as to the 'In Wales' bit - it does seem rather superfluous doesn't it? Also 'flowing into the Irish Sea' is rather unsatisfactory since those flowing into Liverpool Bay are also de facto flowing into the Irish Sea. Have made further changes which I hope will be seen as sensible Geopersona (talk) 20:57, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Looks good to me! Dricherby (talk) 23:14, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Longest river?
Is the table List of rivers in Wales correct? According to the River Teifi article, at 76 miles long it is the longest river wholly within Wales, and therefore not the River Towy at 68 miles (the article says 75 miles). I know there are different ways in which the measurement is made or indeed estimated, but shouldn't the articles agree?  Tony Holkham   (Talk)  17:14, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
 * They should. The cited ref on the River Teifi article is dead. The length given on the River Towy page is not cited. Natural Resources Wales, p.5 gives the Tywi as the longest river in Wales. The Welsh Academi Encyclopaedia of Wales gives: Teifi River (117 km) and Tywi River (120 km). Shall we go with that? Daicaregos (talk) 09:55, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Sounds good. Thanks for that.  Tony Holkham   (Talk)  10:03, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

I am going to have to resurrect this issue I am afraid, mainly because this item crops up all the time in pub-quizzes and Wikipedia finds itself as being quoted as the source for the "correct" answer. So I feel it is necessary for the information here to be as "right" on this matter as it is possible to be. The quoted sources seem light on real data (we are talking measurements after all despite the issues to be acknowledged with Definition of length) and the NRW source for the Tywi seems to now have disappeared. I shall attempt a rigorous search for definitive data on river lengths and then come back with the results. Tedmarynicz (talk) 11:15, 7 March 2017 (UTC)
 * The figure given for the Usk in the table is not per the cited reference and I don't know how to change it given the miles/km conversion that is in place. The ref gives 125km not 126km. In any case the EofW asserts a different higher figure, though either way, it's fairly certain that the Usk is the longest. Geopersona (talk) 08:03, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

(L), (R), M)
(L) and (R) are explained but (M) suddenly appears out of nowhere when discussing Nant Gwrtheyrn and Afonydd Geirch, Amwlch and Pen-y-graig. It would be good to have that explained for those like me who are not quite sure what it signifies. Thanks. Gwyddno 21:06, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I have removed the (m) s. They may have been intended to indicate that these small streams are rivers in their own right and not tributaries - i.e. "Main" or alternatively that they are statutory "Main rivers" as defined by then then Environment Agency Wales (now Natural Resources Wales) - but, if so, then the designation was incorrect. In either case (m) is not defined and therefore has no meaning. Now gone.  Velella  Velella Talk  07:14, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for the clarification Gwyddno 14:47, 9 April 2016 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gwyddno (talk • contribs)