One of the things that I can never get over about your country is the persistence of "wild" areas like these. It reminds me of when I was in medical school and we were discussing how bad people are at properly assessing / grasping statistical probability, as in, you can tell a person what the chance is of something "bad" happening, but it's not usually meaningful to him, because our brains are poor at picturing just what a 1 in 70,000 chance (for instance) "looks like".
In a similar way, I hear that the population of the UK is 80 mill or whatever, and I think gee, it must be over-crowded, but it clearly isn't, not totally so.
Northumberland is the most sparsely populated county in England - and has been for centuries. eg. the Parish of Simonburn was the largest (in terms of area) of any in the Church of England.
http://simonburn.info/parish-history
And the doctors practice a friend used to work in, was the biggest in area in England.
By contrast, most of England seems crowded to me - even the hill areas like the Lake District or Yorkshire Dales. Perhaps only in the Cheviot Hills can you walk for an hour or more without meeting anyone.
Thanks for this one; I love the stone circles so much, and treading ground that's been trodden for 4000 years makes me giddy.
ReplyDeleteOne of the things that I can never get over about your country is the persistence of "wild" areas like these. It reminds me of when I was in medical school and we were discussing how bad people are at properly assessing / grasping statistical probability, as in, you can tell a person what the chance is of something "bad" happening, but it's not usually meaningful to him, because our brains are poor at picturing just what a 1 in 70,000 chance (for instance) "looks like".
ReplyDeleteIn a similar way, I hear that the population of the UK is 80 mill or whatever, and I think gee, it must be over-crowded, but it clearly isn't, not totally so.
Northumberland is the most sparsely populated county in England - and has been for centuries. eg. the Parish of Simonburn was the largest (in terms of area) of any in the Church of England.
ReplyDeletehttp://simonburn.info/parish-history
And the doctors practice a friend used to work in, was the biggest in area in England.
By contrast, most of England seems crowded to me - even the hill areas like the Lake District or Yorkshire Dales. Perhaps only in the Cheviot Hills can you walk for an hour or more without meeting anyone.