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Britain is an island country. It is surrounded by the sea. It lies in the north Atlantic Ocean off the north coast of Europe. It is separated from the rest of Europe by the English Channel in the south and the North Sea in the east. The English Channel between England and France is quite narrow and the narrowest part is called the Straits of Dover, which is only 33 km across. In 1985 the British government and the French government decided to build a channel tunnel under the Straits of Dover so that England and France could be joined together by road. After eight years of hard work this channel tunnel which is called “Chunnel” was open to traffic in May 1994.

Britain covers an area of 244 100 square km. It runs 1 000 km from north to south and extends, at the widest part, about, 500 kilometers. So no part of Britain is “cry far” from the coast and it provides a valuable resource. The British coast is long and has good, deep harbors. Sea routes extend far inland, providing cheap transportation.

Britain has, for centuries, been slowly tilting with the North-West slowly rising and the South-East slowly sinking. The north and west of Britain are mainly highlands. In western parts of Scotland this rise in the land has resulted in the formation of raised beaches-flat areas of land in an otherwise mountainous area, which provides the main farming, settlements, and industrial areas as well as routeways.

The east and south-east are mostly lowlands. They are the part called the Great European Plain, with its level land and fertile soil. There is much good farmland especially in the south and along the east coast of England.

During the Ice Age¹great ice covered Great Britain. Ice has been responsible for most of Britain’s spectacular mountain scenery especially in Snowdonia, the Lake District, and the Scottish Highlands.

It left Great Britain with mountains with flat tops, hanging valleys, and with waterfalls, ribbon lakes, flat valley floors, steep valley sides, boulder clay and fertile soil as well.

England occupies the largest, southern part of Great Britain with Wales to its west andScotland to its north. It has an area of more than 130 000 square kilometers which takes up nearly 60% of the whole island. The southwest and west except for the Severn Valley and the Cheshire-Lancashire plain （round Liverpool） are largely a plateau, with rolling plains, downs and occasional moors. The Pennines, a range of hills running from North Midlands to the Scottish border, are the principal mountain chain. But the highest peak of England, Scafell（978 m）, is in the Lake District in northwest England. The east of England is mainly an open cultivated plain, narrowing in North Yorkshire to a passage （Vale of York） between coastal moors and the Pennines, and in Northumberland to a coastal strip.

Scotland has an area of 78 760 square kilometers. It is in the north of Great Britain with many mountains, lakes and islands. There are three natural zones: the Highlands in the north, the central Lowlands, and the southern Uplands. The Highlands （300- over 1 200 m） are a wild, rocky, mountainous plateau with a coast-line deeply indented, especially in the west. Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in Britain （1 343 m） is located here. The western part of Highlands and the islands of Hebrides are a very beautiful region.

Great sea lochs, or fiords, alternate with wild and empty hills, and on some of the lochs there are farms which can only be reached by boat. The Lowlands in the center comprise mostly the Forth and Clyde valleys, coal and iron fields and dairy pasture. This is the most important area in Scotland which contains most of the industry and population. The southern Uplands, a rolling moorland （mainly 240-600 m）, are cut by small fertile river valleys. Scotland has about 800 islands including the Orkneys, Shetlands and Hebrides and hundreds of lakes. Edinburgh is the capital of Scotland.

Wales is in the west of Great Britain. It has an area of 20 761 square kilometers which takes up less than 9% of the whole island. Most of Wales is mountainous: the hills rise steeply from the sea and are rather flat on top. 6% of Wales is covered with forest and much of the country is pasture-land for sheep and cattle. Only 12% of the land is arable. Wales forms a massif with a lowland fringe widest along the English border and south coast. The massif is largely between 180 and 600 m, rocky in the north and coal bearing in the south. Snowdonia （1 085 m） in the northwest is the highest mountain in Wales. The capital of Wales is Cardiff.

Northern Ireland is a fourth region of the United Kingdom. It takes up the northern fifth of Ireland and has an area of 14 147 square kilometers. It has a rocky and wild northern coastline, with several deep indentations. In the northeast lie the uplands of County Antrim, while the mountains in the southeast gradually give way to the central lowlands of the Lough Neagh basin. Belfast is the capital of Northern Ireland.