towering cliffs; elsewhere the sea may penetrate in deep lochs, as along much of the west coast of Scotland. Bold outstanding headlands are notable features in other parts of the varied coastline: the granite cliffs of Land's End; the limestone masses or forbidding slates of the Pembrokeshire coast; the red sandstone of St. Bees Head; and the vertically jointed lavas of Skye and the island of Staffa. Even around Lowland Britain there are striking contrasts. In some parts the soft, white limestone—the chalk—gives rise to die world-famous white cliffs of Dover or the Needles off the Isle of Wight. Near at hand are accumulations of sand and shingle, and such tracts as Chesil Beach, Dungeness and the sandspits of the Norfolk coast have their own peculiar beauty. The eastern coast of England between the Humber and the Thames estuary is for the most part low-lying and for hundreds of years some stretches of it have been protected against the sea by embankments. These have occasionally been breached, as in the flood disaster of January 1953, which was caused by the abnormal concurrence of violent gales and exceptionally high tides.
The marked tidal movement around the British Isles sweeps away much of the sand and mud brought down by the rivers and makes the estuaries of the short British rivers valuable as natural havens. In times past every little cove round the rocky coasts afforded shelter to a fishing village from the waves of the North Sea or the giant rollers of the Atlantic.
Situated for the most part on the border land between Highland and Lowland Britain are the outcrops of the Coal Measures containing nearly all Britain's coal. The older coal workings and collieries are found where the coal seams are at or near the surface and where the early miners followed them up the deep valleys into the highlands, as in Yorkshire or South Wales. The modem deep collieries seek the coal where it lies beneath a cover of younger rocks and amid the farming lands of Lowland Britain. This is well seen in Yorkshire where the newer pits are ever moving farther and farther east into farming country. Most of the coalfields of Britain, including those of the great Central Lowland of Scotland, have given rise to industrial regions, so that the old rural pattern of British settlement based essentially on the occurrence of good soils suitable for intensive farming has been largely overlaid by the newer urban industrial pattern, which is still growing and spreadings
Britain does not suffer from extremes of climate. It hes entirely in middle latitudes and the dominant winds are south-westerly. The weather from day to day depends mainly on a succession of depressions or lows, with intervening ridges of high pressure, which tend to approach the British Isles from the Atlantic and to pass over in an easterly direction. Long periods of settled weather associated with stable air masses are the exception rather than the rule.
Throughout the British Isles winters can be described as mild. Apart from the exposed uplands the average temperature for the coldest month is lowest along or near the east coast (38° F. = 3-3° C.[1]). The warm the Scilly Isles, have an average January temperature of 440 F. Except on exposed mountains, temperatures as low as 150 F. or 20° F. are rare and until a recent exceptionally cold winter it was doubtful whether 0° F. had ever been recorded.
The summers are warm rather than hot. The average for August, usually the warmest month, ranges from 63° F. in the south to about 550 F. in the extreme north. Temperatures of 90° F. and above are rare, and 100° F. has scarcely ever been recorded.
Because the dominant winds are from the south-west this is the rainy quarter and there is a great contrast between the extremely heavy rainfall of the western mountains—in
- ↑ 32° F.= 0° C. and the conversion factor from Fahrenheit to Centigrade is 5⁄9, thus 440C.,11° F.= -11.7° C., 20° F.= -6.7° C., 0° F.= -17.8° C., 63° F.= 17.20 C., 55° F.= 12.8° C.,90° F.= 32.2 C., 100° F.= 37 8° C.
