Isn't Carlisle in Scotland?

[Gardenwoe]

So was just looking at where Morcambe is, whilst watching the shambolic Spurs game. And was surprised to see Carlisle is in England... I would have bet my DH life on it being in Scotland

We once went on holiday to Wales and planned a day trip to St David's. I had no idea it was a tiny village with a cathedral in the middle. I think we spent 90 minutes there

Last summer I booked tickets to an Art Exhibition in Eastbourne. When I told DH he asked wasn't that the weekend we were going to East Devon. I said indeed it was, so we could just pop over the border into Dorset. I was convinced Eastbourne was next to Bournemouth on the coast.

@TheCanyon I'm feeling quite reassured by the number of other people who also struggle with UK geography. It's shocking really given we are really quite a small country. I love maps and used to spend family car jouneys looking at the AA atlas in the car.

[quote Gardenwoe]@TheCanyon I'm feeling quite reassured by the number of other people who also struggle with UK geography. It's shocking really given we are really quite a small country. I love maps and used to spend family car jouneys looking at the AA atlas in the car.[/quote]
The ITV Borders lunchtime news has just started, first story is about..... Carlisle

@immersivereader

Berwick on Tweed ? Must be in Scotland, Tweed is in the name??

The river tweed ends the last 2 miles of its journey in England

I love this thread. I'm pretty good at geography but I'll never forget the first time the question came up in a pub quiz 'is Edinburgh on the same longitude as London or Cardiff'. As pp have said, it very easy not to realise how NW a the East coast of England & Southern Scotland is angled.

My gremlin is that Lillehammer (host of the Winter Olympics, 1994, in Norway) and Lilleshall (National sports Centre, Shropshire) are not close to each other and not even in the same country. They were in the media at the same time when I was young and my brain has them permanently coupled up.

I only knew it was in England as you past the Welcome to England sign on the motorway.
If you live there do you have an English accent?
I know about the Chester fc lne as Im from there. When we visited in the summer we had a day trip to Wales and my friend couldnt believe how close it is. Twenty minutes in car and you pass the welcome to Wales sign. My kids were very surprised to even though I had told them for years that Chester is pretty much on the Welsh border!

Yes people in carlisle have northern English accents as do those in Berwick upon tweed. The latter similar to geordie/Newcastle accent

@EmmaGrundyForPM

We once went on holiday to Wales and planned a day trip to St David's. I had no idea it was a tiny village with a cathedral in the middle. I think we spent 90 minutes there

Last summer I booked tickets to an Art Exhibition in Eastbourne. When I told DH he asked wasn't that the weekend we were going to East Devon. I said indeed it was, so we could just pop over the border into Dorset. I was convinced Eastbourne was next to Bournemouth on the coast.

Is it not then?!? I just had to look that one up as I would have done exactly the same thing!

If it makes you feel any better @Gardenwoe I'm in the borders and ITV seem to be quite confused by this too.

I spent some time working in Barrow (South Cumbria) and lived just up the coast. We used to pick up ITV Borders, rather than ITV Granada. I just assumed Borders meant both sides of the border???

We once went on holiday to Wales and planned a day trip to St David's. I had no idea it was a tiny village with a cathedral in the middle. I think we spent 90 minutes there

It's pretty though. We did a loop round the Pembrokeshire Coastal Way, a boat trip to see some puffins then had early dinner at a gorgeous little restaurant called Cwtch. Unless you plan to do a lot of walking or kayaking or sailing it's only worth a day trip though.

Northern accents here, not Scottish However I have friends who live in Annan& Dumfries and they are definitely Scottish.

It's hard to describe the local accent but my oldest tells me that the word bacon is said like b-eh-cun and the things that you feed bread to on the pond are dooks (same oo sound as foot). And twining has nothing to do with tea or tying up garden plants either. I've lived here 7 years and people still sound different. And when I go home again I can hear the local accent in a way I didn't when I lived there.

And as for the TV we tend to pick up BBC Scotland.

Why is being a city considered such a status symbol?

I've never understood this at all. So many towns seem desperate to be made into cities, but I can't see what actual benefits it brings. Towns clamouring for city status just remind me of Muttley demanding a badge from Dick Dastardly and then sporting a huge cheesy grin when he's given one.

There was a recent article on the BBC News website about the differences it supposedly makes, but it didn't really convince me. To me, a city is a massive, gridlocked, pollution-filled, crime-ridden place with massively deprived areas. I realise this is unfair in a lot of cases and that not all cities are like this - especially the smaller, very historic ones; but personally (and I know that many will disagree), I don't in any way see being a city as a positive thing.

We once went on holiday to Wales and planned a day trip to St David's. I had no idea it was a tiny village with a cathedral in the middle.

I went there many years ago (probably over 20 years ago) and saw that they had a park and ride - left me chuckling for ages! I can only assume that somebody in officialdom, based far away (maybe a EU thing?), had seen them on the list of cities, offered a financial incentive for a P&R on that basis and it had been too good an offer for them to turn down!

Beautiful place, but a mass population centre (even including the tourists) it isn't.

@sixmilessouth
Sat here desperately trying to make Duck not sound like foot and failing

I think towns want to be cities so they get more money. looking at you, Dudley

Namechange215 yes you are right. I don’t know either I shall have to ask DDs friend when I next see him. Last I heard he was in Brighton.

Fangirlx Border TV station is in Carlisle. It moved from where it used to be and you sometimes get glimpses of the castle in the background.
It covers the news for Cumbria and Dumfries and Galloway occasionally creeping into Northumbria if a bad accident on the A69 or snow therefore warning people in Cumbria travelling. I used to know one of the news readers. He reported on the Lockerbie plane crash. He was quite disturbed by it for some time.

DH is Cumbrian.

The Cathedral in Lancaster is indeed Catholic. There is a University Campus there too which is becoming very popular.

I can remember stopping in Carlisle when we driving up to see my granny in Scotland. I remember dad telling me it was the last place in England and soon we would be in Scotland. I failed to realise we had nearly 300 miles to go before we reached granny’s house. We had come from Windsor! It snowed a lot and we got stuck before Christmas and stayed at a pub with a beautiful Christmas tree and the owners were really nice to me.

The Cathedral in Lancaster is indeed Catholic. There is a University Campus there too which is becoming very popular.

Apart from the university of Lancaster a couple of miles out of town, it's got a bit of the university of Cumbria in it. (No, Lancaster isn't in Cumbria in case anyone thought that was another geographical gotcha!)

Many years ago I went for an interview with National Express.

They gave you some tests, reading a time table was one and then there were blank maps of the UK, one had airports pictured, another the main motorways and you had to label them.

The geography graduate didn't pass so don't feel bad people.

When driving up to Edinburgh from Oxford we got to Manchester and our southern friend said 'almost there' and was horrified to discover we were only half way!

I used to get the train from Newcastle to Edinburgh all the time when I was at uni and sometimes it used to go via Carlisle if there were engineering works on the east coast line. Doubled the journey time.

@JaninaDuszejko

When driving up to Edinburgh from Oxford we got to Manchester and our southern friend said 'almost there' and was horrified to discover we were only half way!

I once went to a conference in York, and during the intro session the organisers said it was being held in York because it was "halfway" up the country. It took me a few seconds to get my head round that.

York isn't even halfway up really. Apparently Haltwhistle in Northumberland is on the dividing line between the northern and southern halves of the UK, and that's a fair way north of York.

(Which is why it's so ignorant and insulting when Londoners joke about 'The North' being everything beyond Watford Gap.)

I was going to mention Haltwhistle @CSJobseeker as I thought they even had a stone there marking the direct centre of the UK. But then I did a quick Google just to double check and there’s a whole rabbit warren of different proposed UK centres, and now nothing makes sense to me anymore!