UNIT 03: GEOGRAPHY
The land and climate in Britain have a notable lack of extremes:
● Has mountains but none of them are very high;
● Flat land but cannot travel far without encounter hills;
● Has no really big rivers, plains and forests;
● Does not usually get very cold in the winter or very hot in the summer;
● No active volcanoes;
● Earth tremor does no more than rattle teacups.
1. Climate
● The climate in Britain is more or less the same as that of the north - western
part of the European mainland;
● The belief: rains all the time → not true;
● The image of wet, foggy land → made by the Romans invade and Hollywood;
● London gets no more rain in a year than most other major European cities;
● The amount of rain depends on where it is: further west → more rain;
● Mild winter = only high areas have snow; slightly colder in the east;
● Summer in the south warm > the north;
● “Doesn’t have a climate but a weather” = changeability.
2. Land and settlement
● “What it lacks in grandeur, it makes up for its variety”;
● The scenery changes noticeably over quite short distance: 100 miles (= 160
kilometres) can seem twice as far
● The north and the east of the country can be comparatively low-living:
either flat lands and gently rolling hills;
● Mountainous areas: only north and west (also have flat areas);
● Forest largely disappeared;
● Has greater proportion of grassland > any other countries (not Ireland);
● Especially common in southern England: the enclosure of fields and
hedgerows → increase the impression of variety. Although many disappeared
in the second half of the 20th century (dug up for more space), still enough to
support bird life.
● Much is used for human habitation:
○ Densely populated
○ Habitual concern for privacy
○ The love of the countryside → the Welsh and England don't like living
in blocks of flats. The proportion of people to do so < continent
European countries.
→ Cities in England and Wales have been built outwards > upwards
(not so much the case for Scottish cities)
→ London area 3 times population of the Athens area but it occupies
about 10 times the amount of land;
● Almost 80% live in towns or cities > villages or in countrysides = doesn’t
mean building everywhere in Britain.
3. The environment and pollution
● ‘Smog’ (smoke + fog)
● The world’s first industrialised country → first to suffer smog
● London’s ‘pea-soupers’ (thick fogs): famous through Charles Dickens and
Sherlock Holmes
● 1952: worst point → bad smog at the end of the year lasted for several days
→ 4000 - 8000 deaths
● Water pollution: 19th century, Houses of Parliament should be covered by
enormous wet sheets to protect those inside >< bad smell from the River
Thames. Until 1960s, people fell in → go to hospital to have stomachs
pumped
● During 1960s - 1970s, laws: forbade the heating of homes with open coal
fires → stop much of the pollution from factories → at the end of 1970s:
possible to catch fish in the Thames outside Parliament
● In the rest of European countries, the great increase in the motor car in the
last quarter of 20th century → air pollution (Weather forecasts have “air
quality” section and occasionally official advice for certain people: asthma
sufferers… shouldn’t leave houses and takh vigorous exercises)
● Reduction of greenhouse gases → how to provide enough energy becomes
national issue, especially as the country’s oil reserves in the North Sea not
last much longer
● Solutions considered:
○ Nuclear power stations: political unpopular and still emits greenhouse
gases (construction and disposal of the waste they create)
○ Green energy sources:
■ Solar power: Limit to its possibility
■ Tidal power and wave power
■ Wind power really developed: wind farms → common British
landscape; not universally popular (some nature lovers think
they ruin countryside) → construct them offshore in the sea
4. Parts of Britain
● London
○ The largest city in western Europe → dominate Britain
○ Home to headquarters of all government departments, the country’s
parliament, its major legal institutions, and the monarch.
○ The country’s business and banking centre and the centre of its transport
network
○ Contains the headquarters of national television networks and national
newspapers
○ ~7 times larger any other cities in the country; ~ a 5th of the total population
of the UK lives in the wider London area
○ The original walled city of London is quite small (‘the square mile’ today): Not
contain Parliament of the royal court (would interfere with the autonomy of the
merchants and traders live and work there)
○ In Westminster, another city outside London’s walls: these institutions met
→ Today the two cities are just 2 areas of central London
○ The Square Mile (“the City”): home to the country’s main financial
organisations. During daytime > a quarter of a million people work there, <
10.000 people live there
○ The West End: Many theatres, cinemas and expensive shops
○ The East End: Poorer residential area of central London. Traditional home of
the Cockney and home to successive ways of immigrant groups
○ The population in the central area decreased in the second half of 20th
century: the majority of Londoners live in its suburbs (cover a vast area of
land stretching in all directions), millions of them travelling into the centre
each day to work.
○ The most recent trend: Expand to the east, down towards the Thames
Estuary
○ Really cosmopolitan: the variety is by far the greatest in London (>300
languages spoken, restaurants offer cuisine from >70 countries, nearly ⅓
people in London were born outside Britain)
○ Have both the richest and poorest areas in Britain but low chance to meet
crimes
○ In late 2007 → voted online to be the most popular city of international
tourists
○ The most frequent choice for Chinese companies expanding into Europe
⇒ Popularity: apparently infinite cultural variety + long history which has left
intact many visible signs of its richness and drama
● Southern England
○ The area surrounding the outer suburbs of London has the reputation of being
“commuter land”: most densely populated area in the UK (not include a large
city and millions of its inhabitants travel into London to work everyday)
○ The county of Kent (pass through when travelling from Dover/the channel
tunnel to London): “the garden of England” → many kinds of fruits and
vegetables grown
○ The Downs (a series of hills in a horseshoe shape to the south of London):
used for sheep farming
○ The Southern side of the Downs reaches the sea in many places and forms
the white cliffs of the south coast: many retired people live along this coast.
○ Employment in the south-east of England has always been mainly in trade:
the provision of services and light manufacturing
○ No heavy industry → not suffer the slow economic decline in 20th century like
other Britain parts
○ “The West Country”: there is some industry and one large city (Bristol was
once Britain’s most important port < London), farming > widespread. Some
parts are famous for dairy produce (Devonshire cream, and fruit)
○ The south-west peninsula with rocky coast, numerous small bays (noted for
smuggling activities) and wild moorlands (Exmoor and Darmoor): most
popular holiday destination in Britain
○ The winters: mild in some low-lying parts of Cornwall → possible to grow
palm trees → “the Cornish Riviera”
○ East Anglia (to the north - west of London): comparatively rural. The only
region in Britain there are large expanses of uniformly flat land. Flatness + dry
climate → the main area in the country for the growing of wheat and other
arable crops
○ Part of East Anglia, the Fens, been reclaimed from the sea and much of it still
has a very watery, misty feeling to it
○ Further east, the Norfolk Broads are criss-crossed by hundreds of waterways,
but no towns → popular for boating holidays
● The Midlands of England
○ Birmingham is Britain’s second largest city
○ During the Industrial Revolution, Birmingham and the area to its north and
west (Black Country) developed into the country’s major engineering centre.
Factories still convert iron and steel into vast variety of products
○ Other Industrial areas in the Midlands: the towns between the Black Country
and Manchester known as the Potteries (famous for producing china -
factories of Wedgwood, Spode, Minton) and several towns further east:
Derby, Leicester and Nottingham. On the east coasts, Grimsby: once one of
the world’s greatest fishing ports → country’s major fish processing centre
○ Not have many positive associations in the minds of British >< “Shakespear
country” (centred on Stratford-upon-Avon) and Nottingham capitalised on the
legend of Robin Hood
● Northern England
● Scotland
● Wales
● Northern Ireland
