Not directly OSM-related but I thought there might be someone here who
knows...
It seems that the formal boundary of Bristol City Council includes a
huge chunk of the Bristol Channel, from Avonmouth out to Steep Holm,
across to Flat Holm and back again. This was confirmed in 2007 by the
ceremony of "beating the bounds" (see [1]) in which the Mayor reasserts
his territory by following the complete boundary. He got on a boat and
went out to the islands. The islands themselves are not included in his
patch. Flat Holm is an exclave of Cardiff City Council's area and Steep
Holm belongs to North Somerset.
However the boundary between England and Wales runs approximately
half-way between the two islands. I haven't found a definitive statement
of where the border lies, but every map I have found on the internet
shows it where it is in OSM. Therefore a triangular area of water exists
which is on the Welsh side of the border but "owned" by an English
authority. You can see this in [2].
So Bristol is a cross-border authority, unless the national border makes
some kind of detour here.
It's a purely academic discussion of course (who cares about a few
hectares of the Bristol Channel apart from the Mayor of Bristol), but
does anyone know any more? Are there any other examples of this kind of
border anomaly?
Colin
[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/bristol/somerset/7019663.stm
[2]
http://openmapsurfer.uni-hd.de/?zoom=12&lat=51.37133&lon=-3.09757&layers=00000BFFF
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