Counting Counties

Rudy is very suspicious of counting. Counting is what happens to his treats to stop him eating a whole box in one afternoon.

But his humans* like to keep track of things and wanted a list of each county area Rudy has visited and which we still have left to explore. It’s not quite that simple though.

*One of his humans.

How many Scottish counties are there?

By 1890 Scotland had 35 ceremonial counties known as Lieutenancy areas of Scotland which were similar to, but not the same as, the 34 administrative shire counties. The borders of these remained much the same despite changes to how they worked in 1930 and 1947.

But then in 1975 the historic counties were merged into twelve regions made up of 53 districts – counties were no more?! Many districts used shire names even if they didn’t match the original county boundary area which meant lots of ambiguous edge areas.

In 1994 another local government shake up changed things again, no more regions or districts, the areas governed by local councils were now called Council Areas. Of course the old traditional names were kept for many places now on their umpteenth boundary change!

This is all far too much for dogs who just want to go out adventuring.

Our County List

We’ve decided that, for us, we’ll start by using the list of current Council Areas. This means we have 32 well defined geographical areas to group our railway adventures into whether they make sense for this purpose or not.

The population of Scotland is heavily focussed around the Central Belt so it’s no surprise that most stations are within those areas. Most dramatically the City of Glasgow and the whole Highland area have 60 railway stations each.

Note: Croftfoot is an oddity with a council border running directly along the platform, we’ve chosen to count it in both areas.

Scottish Islands & The Railway

The railway in Scotland has always been confined to the mainland meaning the three island areas each have zero stations. Even though they technically wouldn’t be included in a Railway Challenge we realise Scotland wouldn’t be complete without it’s islands. We’ll be making sure Rudy visits at least one ferry port in each island council area before we claim “finished”. We don’t have a list yet, how many ferries are there in Scotland?

PS: Dear Shetland,

I’m not a cartographer and have had to rely on shareable maps I could find of Scotland, I’m sorry you’re in a box. One of the great things I’ve always thought about surface travel by trains & ferries is that it gives a better understanding of where things are in the world. Even as a tourist that gives some insight to the challenges that distance can often have for remote communities and why it’s important for organisations to represent that distance accurately. So, really sorry about the box.

Lots of our research into the general silliness and complexity that different needs and purposes over the years have created for defining Scottish Counties started at the Wikipedia article on the Subdivisions of Scotland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subdivisions_of_Scotland