How Many Islands?

Roger Cox is the Outdoors Columnist of The Scotsman (sounds like a wonderful journalistic position) and has both surfed off and written about the number of islands that make up the British Isles. The Ordnance Survey tracks such matters, indicating that there are 803 large enough to appear with a coastline at the 1:625,000 scale and a further 5,486 recorded as 'point features' or mere specks on the map. The number of inhabited islands is around 2.2% of the 6,289 total - just 137 of them.

Scottish Islands Explorer - covers every one in Scotland
Digital Edition: accessible everywhere