Why are simple lists sometime so difficult to clarify? Back from my visit to Blenheim Palace earlier on today, I remembered the information board which said it was one of 26 world Heritage sites in the UK. How many of these had I visited, I wondered, and how many more do I still have to explore?
I googled ‘world Heritage UK’, and landed on the UK world Heritage sites Portal, part of that wonderful Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Here is one of my pet hates — drop down menus which might give you the opportunity to visit websites one by one, but which don’t let you cut and paste the whole list. Granted, those in the know can do a ‘ view source ‘, but aren’t these government websites supposed to be accessible to all, not just cyber geeks? Besides, stripping down a list from a drop-down menu still takes a bit of fiddly find find and replace work.
By that stage, I’d already clicked on the supposedly interactive map of world Heritage sites in the UK, but this was very messy, with the Cornwall and West Devon mining landscape being represented by a whole sequence of dots, but just one dot being used to represent all the landmarks in central London, sorry I correct myself — all of London, that’s how confusing the map is!
Below the map is a tiny link to a text version, which is what should be offered in the first place, but I’m still confused. According to world Heritage UK, there are 28 sites administered by the British government, and according to Blenheim Palace there are 26 — this difference being made up by outlying territories, but why is there no distinction in this list to pick out Gough Island wildlife reserve (230 miles south-east of Tristan de Cunha, in case you’re interested), or Henderson Island in the Pitcairns? The list actually has 29 sites in it — to add to the confusion Avebury is counted as part of Stonehenge and associated sites, and the Derwent Valley Mills are listed together with the Dorset and east Devon coast for some reason. Then I check through again and see that I have missed the obvious historic town of St George, Bermuda, so now I’m down to 25. Avebury might be listed twice, but it clearly says it is part of the Stonehenge complex, so I can only assume that is meant to be counted once.
Meanwhile, Edinburgh old and new towns are counted as one entity, but as anyone who has visited Auld Reekie will know, there is the small matter of the old Nor Loch, now Princes Street Gardens and Waverley Station, which separates the two from each other. Thankfully, I think I’m back to 26 again.
And when it comes to making the list, they can’t even organise it in proper alphabetical order — i.e. city of Bath should be listed under Bath, city of, surely?
Anyway, now I have finished my rant, and worked out which sites do indeed make up the list of 26 world Heritage sites which are actually in the UK, I can write my blog article about visiting them (at least they won’t be able to make any claim against me for taking Crown copyright information — true plagiarists take all the mistakes with them):