LOWLAND BRITAIN
Practically the whole south and most of the east of the island of Great Britain are occupied by the lowlands. However, one should not think that there are no hills and mountains there at all. When the geographers use the word “lowland” they just mean that the land is lowlying, but it does not mean that the place is flat. In many parts of Lowland Britain there are groups of rather high hills called the downs. This term is rather misleading foreigners who tend to think that it refers to the low – lying places. As a matter of fact, the noun "down" used to mean "a hill" in the language spoken by the Anglo-Saxons (the Old English). Now the word refers to a rather special kind of hill — consisting of chalk and covered with grass. Where the downs meet the sea, they break off in cliffs. ,
The white chalky cliffs near Dover which the people can see while crossing the English Channel, is the sort of symbol of England. Because of them, the Romans used to call the country Albion (from the word albus which means "white"). There are two great ridges of downs there, which are facing each other: the South Downs and the North Downs. They meet on Salisbury Plain, which isn't really a plain, but a grass-covered chalky upland. For more than a century it has been the great training grounds for the British Army. Some of the earliest airfields were also built on the Plain, and near its centre, at Boscombe Down, there is the airfield where many new planes are still tested out. These green ridges, usually four or five hundred feet high, were free of shrub and wood even in prehistoric times, and the people used them as highways - or ridgeways, as they are often called.
In the central part of Lowland Britain rise two groups of hills called the Cotswolds and the Chiltems. The Chilterns begin near Oxford (the oldest university town) and stretch in the direction of Cambridge (the other old university town). The Cotswolds are known for the fine lime-stone of which most towns and villages of southeast are built. The Cotswolds also gave the name to the local sheep, which are so big that are jokingly called "Cotswold lions". The western part of Lowland Britain contains another famous group of hills — the Mendips, also made largely of limestone. It is a very picturesque, romantic place with many caves and gorges.
As different as it can be is the scenery of the eastern section of the Lowland Britain, which is usually called East Anglia. It is the place where the flat fields lie below sea level. The region is also called "Little Holland" (or "The Parts of Holland") because it resembles this European country where the land lies so low that it has to be protected from the sea by dykes. The scenery of East Anglia is peculiar - the great flat swamps with occasional isles of high places that rise above the level of the surrounding swamp. The largest of these "isles" is called the Isle of Ely, famous for the medieval cathedral and the monastery. Such kind of scenery is called the fens. In the 17 th century a big portion of the fens was drained and the places were turned into pasture and farmland.
Where the fens meet the sea, there about thirty shallow inland lakes called the Broads. The scientists say that the Broads appeared as a result of human activity: the people of the early Middle Ages cut the peat they used as fuel. They cut out millions of cubic feet of the stuff, and then, about the 18 th century, the land began to sink and the places of former diggings were filled with water. Nowadays the Broads are often called the great "playgrounds of Southern England". Lots of people come there to enjoy boating. Every summer thousands of enthusiasts navigate up and down the shallow channels connecting the Broads, study the abundant bird life through binoculars (this popular hobby is called bird-watching), and sail down to the open sea.
THANK YOU FOR Attention
