So, what is your personal "Top 100 remaining"?


Interesting - so you have seen 267 in Europe out of 348 - 81 outside Europe
I have seen only 328 in Europe (just 61 more) out of 630 - 302 outside Europe. (221 more)
So, leaving aside the overall totals (which is no doubt fully explained by our respective ages!!), our "visited pattern" is very, very different. There may be some slight definitional differences between us on "Europe" (Eg I don't count Asian Russia and e.g UK/NL/Fr Overseas territories) but, +/- a few, the arithmetic is correct
I calculate that I still have another 140 to see in Europe - but I find it very difficult to work up the enthusiasm to do so (from UK)! Almost none of them fit within my personal "Top Missing" list. Do I really want to bother with Plantin Moretus, Tower of Hercules, Rhaetian Railway, Parforce Hunting Landscape etc etc. OK - if I was in Europe and passing by I would do so but travelling in Europe generally does not attract (though we have visited every country - many on numerous occasions) so, on the whole I do not!
If I really wanted to push up my visited list past 700 there are all those sites in Spain, Italy, Poland, Denmark etc etc, and even Belgium/NL, just waiting to be "picked up". Well - at least the latter will hopefully be seen during the upcoming "WHS Community Get together"!! I guess I am just not "Completionist material"!

I was going to ask Clyde that a few weeks ago. He mentioned it, either in a review or on the forum I can't remember and thought it would be interesting to see others wish lists.

I have an old one myself, no set number just some Category A, B and C ones. Perhaps there is scope for a bit of a poll to find out from people where they really want to visit. Purely speculative, but I think the Minaret of Jam would be fairly high up in the final order, and it may well be the only poll in on the internet where that could be a reasonable outcome.

Solivigant I would certainly recommend calling into the Plantin Moretus if it is on your way to Rotterdam, a surprisingly enlightening museum and excellent collection. Though I think you are right on the others not being worth special trips.

On that note I'm trying to justify a tick for the Parforce Hunting landscape myself. I have been inside it (the Copenhagen to Helsingør train runs through the core zone, so anyone that went that way to Kronborg Castle would be in the same quandary), I was aware that it was on the T-List, kept an eye out for anything remotely relating to Hunting, saw the landscape of straight tracks and but couldn't be bothered to explore further especially as I didn't really want to subject Mrs Meltwaterfalls to a cold, damp and foggy hour long walk as we waited for the next train.
I've seen the important bits, been inside the core zone, was aware of it, and have no desire to go back just to visit it, but I'm not really sure I can justify a tick to myself, I may change my tune though.

meltwaterfalls
I did that too and actually stepped in the core zone but still I'm finding it difficult to tick the Parforce as a visited sites. I even seem to have the exact same photo like the one on the UNESCO website. However, as I have missed Roskilde and will most probably fly to Copenhagen to visit the Jelling Mound, Stevins Klint, Roskilde I could fit in some time to visit/re-visit the Parforce Hunting Landscape and try to spot the marked stones. That said, I would have counted it as a visited site had I seen the surrounding WHS already.

My personal top 100 list is a list of what I consider the best WHS or those I really would like to visit. I wrote down this list AFTER having visited 200+ WHS. My personal favourites are archaeological sites, most representative sites/temples/remains linked to different civilisations worldwide and outstanding natural wonders. That means that there are no industrial heritages sites or modern architecture sites on my list although I still enjoyed visiting some of them.

Interesting statistic. I have 240 outside Europe, so 339 in Europe. So a slightly higher European percentage than you (59 versus 52%)
My coverage of Asia is pretty good if I may say so (130/240).
I have followed the official Unesco division in continents in my count, which I only amended to split North America from Europe

And here are the scores for the top travellers, by continent:
http://www.worldheritagesite.org/test/community.php

(just a test page, I can make it more neat & with percentages)

Interesting!
I suspect that your figures are more likely to be right than mine produced from a cobbled together spread sheet cut and pasted from the "tick list on this site - but I am not quite sure how you get me at 329 for Europe/ N America when I had previously thought I was 328 solely for a Europe in which I didn't even count Turkey! I will have to look at my figures again.
I have often wondered if it would be possible for you to provide a spreadsheet (or CSV file) for each of us to download from our Personal page after logging in. Such a file to include the range of data about each site you hold (Continent, date of inscription, Category etc etc and ref number to permit merging with any personal additions we might add you our own version e.g "Target") as well as our individual "ticks" (preferably as "1"s to assist arithmetic.) The dB held on this Web site could then become my "Master" dB rather than me trying to keep separate personal ones and updating them with additions etc eetc. By the way -how do you handle sites across multiple countries when counting "continents"/Regions - some sites corss regions e.g Mongolia/Russia?

All top 25 world travelers have 200+ WHS from Europe! And many with 50 or less for all (or most) other continents! Impressive one traveller has 60 WHS in Arab States when there are only 79 total!

From the statistically 482 sites in Europe, there are a bit more than 400 (I counted 408) geographically in Europe. So, depending on how you count Els with 339 and Solivagant with 328 are actually pretty close to the max. Please don't nail me on the numbers. I excluded all countries outside Europe and all sites (e.g. from UK, Turkey or Russia) outside the continent.

What explains my high European score is that I started in 2008, when there was already a big number of European sites. I did a few crazy weekend trips that covered a lot. E.g. I visited (and partially revisited) all WHS in the Netherlands within 2.5 days. Had I gone there 20 years ago I'm sure I would have missed out on most of them. Beemster or the Van Nelle fabric are no traditional travel choices. And I can understand those who did all this European countries already and are now less enthusiastic to revisit just to cover that one forgotten industrial complex they missed. Outside Europe the WHS are far more "would have gone there anyway" material. E.g. the sites in Beijing pretty much cover the city's highlights. I'm sure within the next years my stats will shift more towards intercontinental sites.

Would also like to see more stats. I love stats :) I keep a personal excel sheet of my visited sites, where I can filter countries, continents, descriptions and much more.

I CAN'T be "close to the Max" for Europe (proper) - I KNOW there are around another 140 to see! Vast numbers of reasonably "low hanging fruit" (if only i could be bothered!) in Spain, Italy, Greece, Slovakia, Poland, Portugal, Serbia etc etc

I think it would be neat for each traveller to have a stat sheet included in their profile (either created by Els or individually). I did this a while back, it definitely gave me a better understanding of where most of my travels centered on. Granted, I have a much small WHS count than most visitors who frequent this site!

My WHS Regional Stats:
47% Asia
21% North America
16% Latin America
16% Europe

By the way, there are 491 WHS in Europe/North America. One 40 of those WHS are in North America, so 451 in Europe total.

I have been working on something like that for myself with the idea of sharing it here. It comes with co-ordinates as well to make it easy for mapping websites. I have a rare weekend at home coming up, I may have a go at updating it and rounding off the edges. If Els has anything that holds the links on this website then I can build that in as well.

Oh dear I have no discipline. Too distracted with skiing, surfing, diving, sailing, drinking blood with Masai. Luckily I have a wife and children to keep me on the sane side. But even my wife can't stop me from visiting 5 Flemish begijnhoven on the way back from a business meeting in Brussels or a submerged pile dwelling in a Swiss park. My 9 year old daughters have been dragged through beech forests, deserts, jungles, climbed temples, castles and hundreds of churches, sometimes I can go to the beach.

I followed the same lines as the Unesco statistics do (I believe), so all Turkey and Russia are in Europe, and Willemstad (NL Caribbean) and Gough Island are too. They are by State Party, so if the nominating country is in Europe all their WHS are.

UNESCO seems a bit "muddled" over the definition of its regions
This link from the general UNESCO sites clearly lists Kazakhstan as being within "Europe and N America" -
http://www.unesco.org/new/en/unesco/worldwide/europe-and-north-america/
But this search from within the World Heritage section excludes Kazakhstan from Europe and places it in Asia (It has also failed as yet to get to participate in the Eurovision song contest - something which even Morocco and Australia have managed to do!!)
http://whc.unesco.org/en/statesparties/?region=1

I agree that, whatever their idiosyncrasies, any statistics we produce should be relatable to the UNESCO definitions but following them totally seems to hide the main reason we are producing them in this case - to split WHS and their degree of having been seen by "WHS hunters" into genuine Geographical regions which are relevant to where people live and travel to. I would suggest that N America (just USA/Canada) be split off from "Europe and N America" and that Oceania be split off from "Asia and Oceania" (they can easil;y be added together if a figure which exactly equates to the UNESCO regions is required). We then just accept that Israel is in Europe and Arab states split Africa and Asia etc etc - and the odd Pacific and South Atlantic Island being placed in Europe isn't going to skew the figures that much.
I am still not quite sure what to do about the 2 Transboundary WHS which have sections from countries in 2 different regions (Uvs Nuur and Silk Rd - the latter depending on the placing of Kazakhstan)