One of the National Character Areas of the Pennines is the Yorkshire Dales.

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 426.

The Yorkshire Dales (also known simply as The Dales) is an upland area of Northern England dissected by numerous valleys.

The area lies within the county boundaries of historic Yorkshire, though it spans the ceremonial counties of North Yorkshire and Cumbria. Most of the area falls within the Yorkshire Dales National Park, created in 1954 and now one of the fifteen National parks of Britain, but the term also includes areas to the east of the National Park, notably Nidderdale.

The Dales is a collection of river valleys and the hills among them, rising from the Vale of York westwards to the hilltops of the main Pennine watershed. In some places the area extends westwards across the watershed, but most of the valleys drain eastwards to the Vale of York, into the Ouse and then the Humber.

· The Cumbrian Mountains

As the highest ground in England, Scafell Pike naturally has a very extensive view, ranging from the Mourne Mountains in Northern Ireland to Snowdonia in Wales. The Lake District takes the form of a roughly circular upland massif deeply dissected by a broadly radial pattern of major valleys whose character is largely the product of repeated glaciations over the last 2 million years. Most of these valleys display the U-shape cross-section, characteristic of glacial origin and often contain elongate lakes occupying sizeable bedrock hollows often with tracts of relatively flat ground at their heads. Smaller lakes known as tarns occupy glacial cirques at higher elevations. It is the abundance of both which has led to the area becoming known as the Lake District.

The mountains of the Lake District are also known as the "Cumbrian Mountains", although this name is less frequently used than terms like "the Lake District" or "the Lakeland Fells". Many of the higher fells are rocky in character, whilst moorland predominates at lower altitude.

· The Cotswolds

The Cotswolds are a range of hills in southwestern and west-central England, an area 25 miles (40 km) across and 90 miles (145 km) long. The area has been designated as the Cotswold Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The highest point in the Cotswolds range is Cleeve Hill at 1,083 ft (330 m),^[1] 2.5 miles (4 km) to the north of Cheltenham.

The Cotswolds lie mainly within the ceremonial counties of Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire, but extend into parts of Wiltshire, Somerset, Worcestershire, and Warwickshire. The hills give their name to the Cotswold local government district in Gloucestershire, which administers a large part of the area.

· The Downs

The Downs are a roadstead or area of sea in the southern North Sea near the English Channel off the east Kent coast, between the North and the South Foreland in southern England. In 1639 the Battle of the Downs took place here, when the Dutch navy destroyed a Spanish fleet which had sought refuge in neutral English waters. From Elizabethan times, the presence of Downs helped to make Deal one of the premier ports in England, and in the 19th century, it was equipped with its own telegraph and timeball tower to enable ships to set their marine chronometers.

· Dartmoor and Exmoor

Dartmoor is an area of moorland in south Devon, England. Protected by National Park status as Dartmoor National Park, it covers 954 square kilometres (368 sq mi) The moorland is capped with many exposed granite hilltops known as tors, providing habitats for Dartmoor wildlife. The highest point is High Willhays, 621 m (2,037 ft) above sea level. The entire area is rich in antiquities and archaeology.

Numerous prehistoric menhirs (more usually referred to locally as standing stones or longstones), stone circles, kistvaens, cairns and stone rows are to be found on the moor.

Exmoor is loosely defined as an area of hilly open moorland in west Somerset and north Devon in South West England, named after the River Exe the source of which is situated in the centre of the area, 2 miles NW of Simonsbath. Exmoor is more precisely defined as the area of the former synonymous ancient royal hunting forest, officially surveyed 1815–1818 as 18,810 acres in extent.^[

· The Chilterns

The Chiltern Hills form a chalk escarpment (откос, вертикальное обнажение породы) in South East England. They are known locally as "the Chilterns". A large portion of the hills was designated officially as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in 1965.

· The Fens

The Fens, also known as the Fenland(s), are a naturally marshy region in eastern England. Most of the fens were drained several centuries ago, resulting in a flat, damp, low-lying agricultural region.

A fen is the local name for an individual area of marshland or former marshland and also designates the type of marsh typical of the area, which has neutral or alkaline water chemistry and relatively large quantities of dissolved minerals.

· Rivers: the Severn, the Thames, the Trent, the Mersey, the Tyne, the Avon, the Great Ouse

· Lake Windermere

Windermere is the largest natural lake in England.^[1] It is a ribbon lake formed in a glacial trough after the retreat of ice at the start of the current interglacial. It has been one of the country's most popular places for holidays and summer homes since the arrival of the Kendal and Windermere Railway's branch line in 1847. It is in the county of Cumbria and entirely within the Lake District National Park.

· Norfolk Broads

The Broads are a network of mostly navigable rivers and lakes in the English counties of Norfolk and Suffolk. The Broads, and some surrounding land, were constituted as a special area with a level of protection similar to a National Park by The Norfolk and Suffolk Broads Act of 1988.

· Major Cities: London, Birmingham, Bristol, Brighton, Liverpool, Manchester

c) Wales

· The Irish Sea, the Celtic Sea, St. George's Channel, the Bristol Channel, Cardigan Bay

· The Cambrian Mountains, Snowdonia, The Brecon Beacons

The Cambrian Mountains (Welsh: Mynyddoedd Cambria, in a narrower sense: Elenydd) are a series of mountain ranges in Wales.

Originally the term "Cambrian Mountains" was applied in a general sense to most of upland Wales. Since the 1950s, its application has become increasingly localised to the geographically homogeneous Mid Wales uplands, known in Welsh as the Elenydd, which extend from Pumlumon to Mynydd Mallaen. This barren and sparsely populated 'wilderness' is often referred to as the Desert of Wales. The area includes the sources of the River Severn and River Wye, and was unsuccessfully proposed as a National Park in the 1960s and 1970s. The highest point of the range is Pumlumon (or Plynlimon), at 2,467 feet (752 m).

The wider, more historic, use of the term also includes Snowdonia in North Wales, and the Brecon Beacons and Black Mountains in South Wales. They range in height up to 3,560 feet (1,090 m) in Snowdonia.

Snowdonia (Welsh: Eryri) is a region in north Wales and a national park of 823 square miles (2,130 km2) in area. It was the first to be designated of the three National Parks in Wales, in 1951. Snowdon, is the highest mountain in Wales at 3,560 ft (1,085 m).

Snowdonia National Park was established in 1951 as the third National Park in Britain, following the Peak District and the Lake District. It covers 827 square miles (2,140 km2), and has 37 miles (60 km) of coastline.

The Brecon Beacons is a mountain range in South Wales. In a narrow sense, the name refers to the range of Old Red Sandstone peaks popular with walkers which lie to the south of Brecon. Sometimes referred to as "the central Beacons" they include South Wales' highest mountain, Pen y Fan. The range forms the central section of the Brecon Beacons National Park (Parc Cenedlaethol Bannau Brycheiniog), a designation which also encompasses ranges both to the east and the west of "the central Beacons". This much wider area is also commonly referred to as "the Brecon Beacons".

· 3 National Parks (S, BB, P)

· Rivers: the Dee, the Wye, the Severn, the Usk, the Clwyd

· Major cities: Cardiff, Swansea, Newport

d) Northern Ireland

· the coastline (+ the Giant's Causeway)

The Giant's Causeway (known as Clochán an Aifir or Clochán na bhFomhórach in Irish^[1] and tha Giant's Causey in Ulster-Scots)^[2] is an area of about 40,000 interlocking basalt columns, the result of an ancient volcanic eruption.

It is located in County Antrim on the northeast coast of Northern Ireland, about three miles (4.8 km) northeast of the town of Bushmills. It was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1986, and a National Nature Reserve in 1987 by the Department of the Environment for Northern Ireland.

· Loch Neagh

Lough Neagh, sometimes Loch Neagh,^[3] /ˌlɒx ˈneɪ/ is a freshwater lake in Northern Ireland. It is the largest lake in Northern Ireland, supplying 40% of its water; the biggest on the island of Ireland, the biggest in the United Kingdom, and the biggest in the British Isles.

· The Sperrin Mountains, the Antrim Mountains, the Mourne Mountains

The Sperrins or Sperrin Mountains (from Irish Speirín, meaning "little pinnacle"^[3]) are a range of mountains in Northern Ireland and one of the largest upland areas in Ireland. The range stretches the counties of Tyrone and Londonderry from south of Strabane eastwards to Slieve Gallion in Desertmartin and north towards Limavady. The region has a population of some 150,000 and is a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

The Mourne Mountains /ˈmɔərn/ MOHRN, also called the Mournes or Mountains of Mourne, (Irish - na Beanna Bóirche) are a granite mountain range in County Down in the south-east of Northern Ireland. It includes the highest mountains in Northern Ireland and the province of Ulster. The highest of these is Slieve Donard at 850 metres (2,790 ft). The Mournes is an area of outstanding natural beauty and has been proposed as the first national park in Northern Ireland. The area is partly owned by the National Trust and sees a large number of visitors every year. The name Mourne (historically spelt Morne) is derived from the name of a Gaelic clann or sept called the Múghdhorna.^[1][2]

· rivers: the Foyle, the Upper Bann, the lower Bann (the Main, the Blackwater)

· Major cities: Belfast, Londonderry, Lisburn