Hi,

WOW, what a response, emails are coming thick and fast, 
please stop.

Thanks to everyone who replied, I hope you all realised 
that when I aked 'you guys' I was using the term liberally 
to mean anybody, and I hope I did not cause offence - 
nobody actually taking offence.

Several issues have arose:
What do I mean by the coastline around Great Britain?
Well as I recall, Great Britain is the largest Island in 
the British Isles. So all islands are out.

What do I mean by the coastline.
Where does the land end and the sea begin. If you walk 
straight out it can get pretty muddy when the tide is 
in or out. When you get muddy enough you may decide to take 
out your tape measure.

Fractals
Steve Carver from Leeds tells me that measureing around 
every grain of sand along the coast would take too long, 
and I am inclined to agree.




The distances gives vary depending on what scale of map you 
read from.  Nigel N James from Bodleian Library tells us 
that it is '5,601 miles. That's from the 1:1M scale Global 
Insight dataset we use with MapInfo. This excludes 
N.Ireland and the islands around the coast'.

There are other figures, but whatever they are it is toooo 
long.  When I told them how far it was they nearly 
died.  I think they have changed their plans and are going 
for 2000 miles in one week and are now planning to draw up 
a chart showing various events since the birth of Christ 
(1066 and all that) to chart progress.

Many thanks to all who responded, as I write this I can 
hear my in-box still filling up.

cheers


On Thu, 10 Feb 2000 14:40:13 +0000 (GMT Standard Time) John 
Marsden <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> Some of our guys and girls are planning a monster 
> sponsoured swim.  They want to swim, in relays up and 
> down our swimming pool, the distance equivilant to the 
> distance around Great Britain.
> 
> They have asked me to find out exactly what that distance 
> is.  If any of you guys have downloaded a the full GB 
> coverage from UK BORDERS or MIMAS and hold it in Arc/Info 
> format I would be greatful if you would let me know what 
> the perimeter is.
> 
> Failing that, does anyone know how I would find out the 
> perimeter of GB?
> I dont fancy downloading all the counties and maybe editing 
> out all the internal polys.
> 
> cheers
> 
> 
> ----------------------
> John Marsden                    
> [log in to unmask]                         
> 

----------------------
John Marsden                    
[log in to unmask]                         



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