D - A Brief Survey of the British Physical Geography 1.

Topography
Great Britain is just under 1,000 km long and just under 500 km across in its widest part. The most mountainous region is Scotland (with Britains highest peak, Ben Nevis 1,343 m), which also has a wide low land area between the Grampian and the Southern Uplands, where most of the large town, including Edinburgh and Glasgow, and three quarters of the population are located. Much of Wales also mountainous and in England the Pennine Range (the backbone of England) extends 224 km (although the highest peak is only 895m high). The rest of England tends to be rather undulating, and not even the large agriculture plains of East Anglia are perfectly flat. In Ireland all the highland areas are around the edge, but there are no peaks over 1,100m. Overall, the sound and east of the country are comparatively low-lying, consisting of either flat plains, or gently rolling hills. Mountainous areas are found only in the north and west, although these regions also have flat areas. Rivers in Britain are quiet short the longest rivers are the Severn and the Thames but the easy navigability has made them an important part of the inland transport network for the transportation of bulk products such as coal, iron ore and steel. Britain has neither towering mountain ranges, nor impressively large rivers, plains nor forests. But this does not mean that its landscape is boring. What it lacks in grandeur it make up for in variety. The scenery changes noticeably over quiet short distances. It has often been remarked that a journey of 100 miles (160 kilometres) can, as a result, seem twice as far.

2. Weather and Climate

Britain has a generally mild and temperate climate. The weather, however, tends to be very changeable as a result of the constant influence of different air masses. The prevailing winds are south-westerly, which bring warm air in from across the Atlantic. There are few extremes in temperature, which rarely goes above 32oC or below 10oC. The climate of Britain is more or less the same as that of the north-western part of European mainland. The popular belief that it rains all the time in Britain is simply not true. The image of the wet, foggy land was created two thousand years ago by the invading Romans and has been perpetuated in modern time by Hollywood. In fact, London gets no more rain in a year than the most major European cities, and less than some. The amount of rain that falls on a town in Britain depends on where it is. Generally speaking, the further west you go, the more rain you get. The mild winter means that snow is a regular feature of the higher areas only. Occasionally, a whole winter goes by in lower-lying parts without any snow at all. The winters are in general a bit colder in the east of the country than they are in the west, while in summer, the south is slightly warmer and sunnier than the north. Why has Britains climate got such a bad reputation? Perhaps it is for the same reason that British people always seem to be talking about the weather. This is its

changeability. There is a saying that Britain does not have climate, it only has weather. It may not rain very much altogether, but you can never be sure of a dry day; there can be cool (even cold) days in July and some quiet warm days in January. The lack of extremes is the reason why, on the few occasions when it gets genuinely hot or freezing cold, the country seems to be totally unprepared for it. A bit of snow and a few days of frost and the trains stop working and the roads are blocked; it the thermometer goes above 27oC, people behave as if they were in Sahara and the temperature makes front-page headlines. These things happen so rarely that it is not worth organizing life to be ready for them.