If you're Northern how ignorant are you about the South?

[CuriousMama]

I'm terrible sometimes. Today was talking to dh about a local football team who are playing Swindon. I actually thought that was near London. Always have. I seem to have a block about southern geography. I know where London is obviously 😂 I've been a few times. Hate it though. I only went for events etc.

I would bet Livingston 😂

I am from the North I know I never fitted in there.
I have never got the Northerners are friendly and Southerners aren’t

Northerners in my experience are only friendly in order to get to know everything about you then will stab you in the back at the first opportunity.

Within 6 months of living in London I had more friends than I ever had in all the places in the north I have ever lived.
Everyone was friendly without that pervading pushiness of trying to invade your space in the name of helping and being friendly.

i have lived in London for more years than I lived in the north.
My black hole on geography is when I lived in the Midlands. I have driven in many cities in many countries. I can even drive to Rome or Marbella without a Sat Nav but
coming out of Birmingham I used to have to study a map to remember my way home (usually 30 minutes drive). I always seemed to get completely lost and in some far flung Warwickshire village when I lived South of Birmingham

I could never remember what towns are north south east or west of Birmingham. Used to get Solihull and Sutton Coldfield mixed up regularly.

Yeah, I'm a Manc and Prestwich is more Bury but I know plenty of folk from there that generalise as being 'from Manchester'

I was born down south and lived there for a while so I'm fairly ok with geography
However I've never been to London so have no idea about areas within London itself

well im southern and dont know little towns and such up north

im closer to france than most of the north anyway

everyone always refers to me living in london-im in essex

I'm not at all ignorant of the south or north or Scotland but I do find many are very opinionated based on no personal experience.

Kennykenkencat · Today 12:51
I am from the North I know I never fitted in there.
I have never got the Northerners are friendly and Southerners aren’t

Northerners in my experience are only friendly in order to get to know everything about you then will stab you in the back at the first opportunity

Think you're generalising a bit there based on your experience. And this thread isn't about how shit northerners/southerners are. It's about lack of general geographical knowledge of Britain.

I've met lots of lovely people from all over. And some awful ones. But in the main people are decent.
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From a money perspective though, my MIL lives quite centrally in a large Yorkshire Town/City in a three bed 1930s semi. It is worth about £220k. That house in the southern seaside village/town where my mother lives would cost about £480k.

For vocationally/professionally qualified folk I think materially, the quality of life in the North is better. However, if you have it in the south you can chose whether to stay there or to move and free up capital or get more property bang for your buck.

I think I could place most UK cities on a map. I do not know the Midlands very well except for Derbyshire. I regard Derbyshire as the North Midlands rather than the North. It is utterly beautiful.

You're a boffin 😃

I do a lot of long distance walks and meet people from all over. Rarely meet a bad one. Yes people do judge without actually meeting many people from different regions.

I have an exceptionally detailed knowledge of Scottish geography as a result of a job I had when I was a student - I can accurately place tiny villages and often recall post code areas. Comparatively I always feel my English geography knowledge is poor, especially southern England (though this thread shows me that I'm probably not as bad as I thought 😜)

I grew up in the South East and now live 'tup north'. I generally think southerners are more ignorant about the North than other way round. I know people joke about 'anything above Watford Gap' etc but I've met people who genuinely think like that and have no desire to go north of London. More fool them I say, tis lush up here.

I'm northern. Lived on the south coast for 20 years. Lots of my northern acquaintances seem set on the idea that I live in London (I'm over an hour away)

I’m a southerner and up until a few years ago I thought Manchester was really far north when of course in reality it really isn’t. I kind of like not knowing exactly where all the major northern towns are - makes them seem more enticing and mysterious somehow. Like many having watched happy valley I really want to explore West Yorkshire now! I also have a bucket list dream of walking from lands end to John o groats someday so I can get a real feel of our different regions of our beautiful country!

The Home Counties is all much of a muchness. Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, all that bollocks. Which bits are north of London or south of London or whatever, I don’t really know.

I’ve got a reasonable grasp of the geography of the south coast and the south west though, because they feel like proper towns with their own histories and identities that don’t just exist for people to live in who work in London.

But equally I’m not offended by the ignorance of southerners who don’t get the distinction between say Middlesbrough and Newcastle either.

From the actual central point, or where the monument is?

Either way you're three hours away from the nearest coast and the Seaview Guesthouse Rugby is just a myth.

Only 60 miles from central Oxford to central London.

I was talking about Swindon. I lived in Oxford for years and commuted for a while into a job on Regent St on the 6 am Oxford Tube!

Sorry, that was to @slowquickstep!

Do other countries have the weird north/south divide that we do? Do people in southern Spain dislike people in Northern Spain and vice versa or is it just a Brit thing?

I think northern inhabitants of both italy and Spain are a bit snooty about their southern compatriots viewing them as less sophisticated and a bit more country bumpkin ish.

If anything, the North / South divide in Italy is even bigger than that of England, but it’s the north which is rich & posh and the south which is poor and underdeveloped.
I used to work with a guy from Bergamo, in northern Italy, or ‘near Switzerland’ as he described it. When I told him that we were planning a holiday in Naples, he was appalled. He told me that the city was ‘near Africa’, he warned me that it was very dangerous, it was filthy, it was full of illiterate peasants and criminals and to be very careful. I asked him if he had ever been to Naples himself. He looked horrified at the prospect : ‘Of course not!’, he replied…

@Tryphenia does the Oxford tube still exist?
I’d completely forgotten about it and never see it anymore.

I'm a southerner and find it weird driving up North as I don't know the geography of places at all. Down here if I see a road sign that says Portsmouth one direction and Guildford the other then I have my bearings. Driving in Yorkshire I see place names but have no idea what direction the roads would take me. Obviously a sat nav helps but I wouldn't know if I wanted to travel towards Goole or Sheffield or Beverley.

Yes! They're pretty close to each other. As close as Swindon and London at any rate. 😂