Stinky Bay
Coastguards will no longer be confused by strange (and rude) place names
What is it?
There are actually two of them - one in Polzeath, Cornwall (pictured right) and another 800 miles away in Craigie Brae, in Scotland’s Western Isles. They’ve been cited by Ordnance Survey (OS) as examples of coastal areas with nicknames used by local people that emergency services don’t recognise. Ideally, people would quote map coordinates when they phone for help, but these can be hard to find without internet access. Instead, they typically say what comes first into their heads, which is often the name used colloquially by locals.
So Stinky Bay isn’t an official name?
No, which is why historically it’s never been written on the maps used by rescue teams. Other places they’ve struggled to find include Black Knob Point (Salcombe, Devon), Crazy Mary’s Hole, (Gisleham, Suffolk), Nuncle Dicks (Portland, Dorset) and Slippery Bottom (Ludham, Norfolk).
Wait – aren’t these just names from an old Benny Hill sketch? Or on a saucy postcard from the 1950s?
We’re sure they’ve raised many titters over the years, but they all exist – at least in the bawdy vernacular used by those who live and work nearby. The OS has now given these locations the recognition they deserve by adding them to Fintan, which is the digital mapping tool used by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA).
How does that work?
It’s very simple. Rescuers just type the name of a location – whether official or a nickname – into a website and they’ll see where it is. This can save vital seconds when responding to an emergency. In 2020, the MCA dealt with 33,000 incidents – a number that’s expected to rise this year as record numbers of people choose to stay in the UK for their summer holidays.
Can the public use the site?
No, it’s just for the MCA. It started as a trial on the south coast of England, with staff entering nicknames for offshore rocks and islands. Long term, the OS wants Fintan to help other emergency services, not just the coastguard. Chris Chambers, head of OS National Mapping Services, said that “across the country people refer to many other locations with nicknames – from buildings to parks and roundabouts to road junctions”.
In many cases the nickname is much better known than the real name, such as Spaghetti Junction in Birmingham, (officially called Gravelly Hill Interchange), or London’s Gherkin (30 St Mary Axe). And if you live in Swindon you might report an accident at The Magic Roundabout, which is a notorious ring junction comprising five mini-roundabouts arranged in a circle.
How many nicknames does Fintan already have?
Around 7,500, making up a fraction of the database’s 500,000 locations overall. The OS has created an animation showing how these unofficial names have been added to the database over the past nine years: www.snipca.com/39024. It says these rarely appear on mapping tools available to the public, such as Apple Maps or Google Maps.
So what happens if you search for ‘Stinky Bay’ on Google Maps?
It takes you to a beach in South Australia (see screenshot left), about 230 miles south of Adelaide, and near the country’s only beach nudist resort. We’re sure the proximity of the two is just a coincidence.