Wales

Wales is a country in the United Kingdom at latitude 52°26′56.40″ North, longitude 4°13′37.20″ West.

This page contains information relating to mapping activity that is specific to Wales.

See also United Kingdom.

Welsh names

Most places in Wales have Welsh names - these are shown on road signs and on street signs.

Welsh names can be tagged using name:cy=* see Multilingual names#Wales for an in-depth discussion of when and where to use it.

An OSM rendering showing the Welsh names is available at OpenStreetMap Cymraeg, as of November 2017.

Principal areas

The Principal Areas are governed by unitary authorities and are the legislative regions of Wales^[1].

Preserved counties

Preserved counties are counties based on the historic counties of Wales and used for lieutenancy.

Historic counties

There are thirteen historic counties of Wales (including Monmouthshire), the last of which were created by the Laws in Wales Act 1535. For the purposes of biological recording each historic county forms an eponymous vice county, with the detached parts of Flintshire treated as being in Denbighshire.

National Parks

3 of the National Parks in the United Kingdom are in Wales.

Major cities

• Cardiff
• Newport
• Swansea

Boundary

The Welsh boundary can be best considered as split into three types:

1. The land-based border between Wales and England. This is well defined, but the lack of copyright-free data means that the OSM boundary has been derived from New Popular Edition data and its accuracy may be limited.
2. The maritime border between Wales and international waters. This was defined by the Government of Wales Act 2006, section 158: “Wales” includes the sea adjacent to Wales out as far as the seaward boundary of the territorial sea. The territorial boundary is in general 12 nautical miles (22.22 km) from the mean low water mark. In OSM, this has been automatically derived from coastline data.
3. The maritime border between Wales and England, extending from land along the Dee and Severn estuaries to the territorial limit. The boundary is defined by means of specified coordinates in The Welsh Zone (Boundaries and Transfer of Functions) Order 2010. (Note: the coordinates specified in this legislation are erroneously written in degrees-minutes-seconds format when they are, presumably, degrees and decimal minutes, as the "seconds" are greater than 59 in several cases.)

See United Kingdom boundaries for more discussion regarding UK boundaries.

The boundary for Wales' maritime unitary authorities is generally at the 3 mile limit except where special provisions apply where islands are within three miles of more than one Unitary authority or where unitary authorities are themselves closer than 3 miles to one another. Thus the division between Anglesey and Gwynedd is a notional line down the Menai Strait. For Gwynedd the boundary includes Bardsey island and out to a limit of 3 miles beyond.

References