Northern Ireland

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 469.

Wales

As in Scotland, most people in Wales live in one small part of it. In the Welsh case, it is the south-east of the country that is most heavily populated. As we have seen, coal has been mined in many parts of Britain, but just as British people would locate the prototype factory of the industrial revolution in the north of England, so they would locate its prototype coal mine in south Wales. Despite its industry, no really large cities have emerged in this area (Cardiff, the capital of Wales, has a population of about a third of a million). It is the only part of Britain with a high proportion of industrial villages. Coal mining in south Wales has now almost entirely ceased and, as elsewhere, the transition to other forms of employment has been slow and painful.

Most of the rest of Wales is mountainous. Because of this, travel between south and north is very difficult. As a result, each part of Wales has closer contact with its neighbouring part of England than it does with other parts of Wales: the north with Liverpool, and mid-Wales with the English West Midlands. The area around Mount Snowdon in the north-west of the country is very beautiful and is the largest National Park in Britain.

With the exception of Belfast, which is famous for the manufacture of linen (and is still a shipbuilding city), this region is, like the rest of Ireland, largely agricultural. It has several areas of spectacular natural beauty. One of these is the Giant's Causeway on its north coast, so-called because the rocks in the area look like enormous stepping stones.