Distances to other countries Scotland's only land border is with England and stretches for approximately 60 miles (100 kilometers) between the Tweed River basin on the east coast and the Solway Estuary in the west. The Atlantic Ocean borders the western coast and the North Sea is to the east. Scotland is part of the United Kingdom (United Kingdom) and occupies the northern third of Great Britain. The Scottish mainland shares a border with England to the south.
It is home to nearly 800 small islands, including the northern islands of Shetland and Orkney, the Hebrides, Arran and Skye. Ireland was always an island and a land bridge was never formed to connect it with Great Britain, according to new research from the University of Ulster. Contrary to general opinion, sea level never fell enough to allow dry land to emerge between the two land masses. The United Kingdom is made up of several islands.
The only land border connecting the United Kingdom to another country is between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. England, the predominant constituent unit of the United Kingdom, which occupies more than half of the island of Great Britain. Nestled by large rivers and small streams, England is a fertile land, and the bounty of its soil has supported a thriving agricultural economy for millennia. At the beginning of the 19th century, England became the epicenter of a global industrial revolution and soon the most industrialized country in the world.
With resources from all populated continents, cities such as Manchester, Birmingham and Liverpool converted raw materials into manufactured products for a global market, while London, the country's capital, became one of the most important cities in the world and the center of a political, economic and cultural network that extended far beyond the coasts of England. Today, the London metropolitan area encompasses much of southeastern England and remains the financial center of Europe and a center of innovation, particularly in popular culture. One of the fundamental characteristics of English is diversity within a small compass. Nowhere in England is more than 75 miles (120 km) from the sea, and even the farthest parts of the country are no more than a day's journey by road or train from London.
Formed by the union of small Celtic and Anglo-Saxon kingdoms at the beginning of the medieval period, England has long comprised several different regions, each of them different in dialect, economy, religion and disposition; in fact, even today many English people identify themselves by the regions or counties from which they come, for example,. However, commonalities are more important than these differences, many of which began to disappear in the post-World War II era, especially with the transformation of England from a rural society to a highly urbanized one. The country's insular location has been of vital importance for the development of the English character, which promotes the apparently contradictory qualities of openness and reserve, along with conformity and eccentricity, and values social harmony and, as is the case in many island countries, the good manners that guarantee orderly relations in a densely populated landscape. For many, Orwell captured as well as anyone else the essence of what Shakespeare called “this blessed plot”, this land, this kingdom, this England.
England is bordered to the north by Scotland; to the west by the Irish Sea, Wales and the Atlantic Ocean; to the south by the English Channel; and to the east by the North Sea. England's topography has a low elevation but, except in the east, is rarely flat. Much of it consists of undulating hillsides, with the highest elevations in the north, northwest and southwest. This landscape is based on complex underlying structures that form intricate patterns on the geological map of England.
The oldest sedimentary rocks and some igneous rocks (on isolated granite hills) are found in Cornwall and Devon, in the south-west of the peninsula, ancient volcanic rocks are at the base of parts of the Cumbria mountains and the most recent alluvial soils cover the marshes of Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire and Norfolk. Among these regions are sandstone and limestone bands from different geological periods, many of them relics from primitive times, when large parts of central and southern England were submerged under warm seas. Geological forces lifted and folded some of these rocks to form the backbone of Northern England, the Pennines, which rise to 893 meters (2,930 feet) at Cross Fell. The Cumbria mountains, which include the famous Lake District, reach 978 meters (3,210 feet) at Scafell Pike, the highest point in England.
The slate covers most of the northern part of the mountains, and in the southern part there are thick lava beds. Other sedimentary layers have produced chains of hills ranging from 965 feet (294 meters) in the North Downs to 1,083 feet (330 meters) in the Cotswolds. The hills known as Chilterns, North York Moors and Yorkshire and Lincolnshire Wolds were surrounded by characteristic west-facing plateaus with escarpments during three successive glacial periods of the Pleistocene Epoch (about 2,600,000 to 11,700 years ago). When the last ice sheet melted, sea levels rose, submerging the land bridge that had connected Britain to the European continent.
The deep deposits of sand, gravel and glacial mud left by retreating glaciers further altered the landscape. Erosion caused by rain, rivers and tides and subsidence in parts of eastern England later shaped the hills and coastline. Strata plateaus of limestone, sandstone and carbonifera are associated with major coal deposits, some of which exist as outcrops on the surface. The Scottish mainland comprises the northern third of the land mass of the island of Great Britain, which is located off the northwest coast of continental Europe.
. Many of these sediments are of economic importance, since this is where the rocks containing coal and iron that fueled Scotland's industrial revolution are found. The main railway lines on the east and west coast connect Scotland's major cities and towns to each other and to England's rail network. Scotland is surrounded by several bodies of water that depend on the coast, with the North Sea in the east separating us from the Scandinavian states of Europe, and the Atlantic Ocean in the north and west that separates us from Iceland, the United States and Canada.
The oldest Norse settlements were in the north west of Scotland, but they eventually conquered many areas along the coast. Kilmarnock Academy, in East Ayrshire, is one of only two schools in the United Kingdom, and the only one in Scotland, to have educated two Nobel Prize winners: Alexander Fleming, discoverer of penicillin, and John Boyd Orr, first baron of Boyd-Orr, for their scientific research on nutrition and their work as the first director general of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). British Airways, EasyJet, Flybe, Jet2 and Ryanair operate most flights between Scotland and other major airports in the United Kingdom and Europe. Most of the United Kingdom is made up of gently rolling hills with isolated areas of elevated terrain, such as Dartmoor in south-west England or the Mourne Mountains in Northern Ireland.
Within Scotland, the monarchy of the United Kingdom has continued to use a variety of styles, titles, and other royal symbols of statehood specific to the pre-union Kingdom of Scotland. All of Scotland was covered by layers of ice during the Pleistocene glaciations and the landscape is greatly affected by glaciation. Scotland has production companies that produce films and television programs for Scottish, British and international audiences. Therefore, the border symbolized state authority and the Debatable Lands became the height of a kind of rebellion, in which powerful families plundered each other both in Scotland and in England and neither government pledged to resolve it.
The lowland coast, flanked by rolling hills, expands until the estuary meets the Irish Sea, creating a natural break in the land between Dumfries and Galloway in Scotland and Cumbria in Northern England. These group awards, together with Scottish professional qualifications, aim to ensure that the population of Scotland has the right skills and knowledge to meet work needs. .