I recently surveyed the main paths at Croham Hurst, a tree-covered hill with two bare caps at the peak. It’s a beautiful, peaceful spot (and designated SSSI) just minutes on the bus from Croydon high street.

Anyway, my instinct was that, since the wooded area doesn’t accurately define the actual area called Croham Hurst (not only are the peaks bare but the wood extends slightly over the outer boundary), I should use a multipolygon for the wood, and a separate, overlapping area to define Croham Hurst itself. For want of anything better (there isn’t an establised tag for SSSIs/protected natural areas/etc I don’t think) I tagged it as “leisure=park”. But on Mapnik that made the woods render in a yucky greeny-turquoise. I know about “tagging for the renderer” but still, I wondered why it was happening, and whether it was partly a substandard choice of tags.

In the end I got inspiration from the nearby Addington Hills, tagging the “holes” as “natural=heath”, and replacing “leisure=park” with the generic “area=yes” (with a Wikipedia link describing what the site actually is). I’m certainly happy with how it renders – but hopefully fellow mappers will be happy with how it’s tagged!

Linky: http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=51.353&lon=-0.07851&zoom=16&layers=M