Half of Britons think countryside is "boring"

[Heart of Oak]

You must come and see for yourself, I could put endless pic's up here, but I could never tell you the true experience of being somewhere like, Avebury Wiltshire or how it feels to stand on top of The Tor at Glastonbury. Cornwall and Devon are so cool I find it hard to express.
And then you have Wales and Scotland so Beautiful, and of corse you can always take a trip to the Emerald Isle.

[Leadchucker]

We have lots of mosquito's over here. They are generally larger and you get itchy red bumps from their bites. They don't really swarm like in that pic though.

I'm across the river from Scrapple and mosqutos can be bad enough here. It's the greenheads that are real badazzes however. They can get pretty big and I would swear that I've seen some with navigation lights and afterburner exhaust cones. They hurt like hell when they bite with their scissors like mandables.

[Albion]

I don't think this is true, usually these polls have some sort of bias and a lot of them performed by the newspapers tend to target segments of society even when attempting to be impartial.

More than half of Britons think the countryside is boring and many of them are unable to identify common animals and plants, according to a new survey.

A third of people who were asked said they had never even considered visiting the British countryside.

The survey found one in 10 adults could not identify a sheep, 44% could not identify an oak tree and 83% failed to recognise a bluebell.

When they were shown a picture of a stag, 12% of adults identified it incorrectly as a reindeer.

Where did they do the study? London? I bet it's London, that sounds like them.
Most British people live in small to medium towns, this study has clearly been done in some city such as London where the people quite frankly couldn't give a fuck about what goes on outside of the city. London is especially like that, its very insular in its outlook towards the rest of Britain.

I think the study is complete crap, you really need to come here and see rural property going for millions and all the books being published about escaping the rat race, walking, and self-sufficiency along with related topics to see just how popular the countryside is.
I also think there's a divide between youth and adults, the youth tend to think its boring but eventually grow out of it and come to appreciate it I think.

What's on TV? Programmes entitled "escape to the country" and related shows, programmes about the Lake District, Cornwall and things about British wildlife.

The study is rubbish, if anything there's a bit of a craze for the countryside at the moment, everyone over 25 wants a piece of it.

[Albion]

Countryside is okay for those who love the easy lifestyle.

If you have money, sure. If not then its not really so easy.

Fuck my generation. I could never live in a big city,way too much noise and conflict.

Agreed.

The countryside is indeed dull and boring, compared to the cedar forests that once covered half the island.

Cedar don't occur in Britain apart from a few planted Cedars of Lebanon at a few manors. These islands were covered by forests of oak and ash mainly with other species mixed in.
In Scotland it gave way to Scots Pine in the Highlands.

It was never one continuous forest, it was broken up by the occasional moorland, heath, bog or meadow and trees would be brought down naturally in fires occasionally.

Those were completely destroyed in order to build ships for the British Empire. It's actually hilarious, how we razed and deforested our own island for a lost cause, then destroyed the environment with the "Industrial Revolution", and finally invited the ones we ruled to swarm over here into our country and wreak havoc. Weird.

Um... no. The forests were largely destroyed in the Neolithic, slowly cut down by farmers to make way for pasture and arable land.
The climate was much warmer at that time, but when it deteriorated to its present state it became wetter and some areas in the hills turned to more moorland and bog and so were fit only for grazing sheep. The sheep in turn kept the trees from re-establishing in the hills since they'd eat all the saplings and still do. Forests in the hills aren't a great loss though, they'd only be some scraggy birches and severely stunted oaks in the wet and windy conditions up there. I've seen such a woodland, its practically useless for both man and beast whereas moors do support some rare wildlife.

What the British Empire actually did was this:

• Took many of the straighter-growing oaks and Scots Pines from England and Scotland for ships. These didn;t grow in vast woodlands, but mainly at the edges of fields
• Before that, medieval England and Wales used vast amounts of Yew for longbows. Still though, many ancient Yews survive. There's one 5 minutes away from me, 2000 years old and never touched by an axe.

It's pretty hard to find any forest in Britain (especially in England) still in its natural state. It's too small and there's too many people. That said, there's still some unspoilt areas in Wales and the Scottish Highlands.

The forests have always been used to some extent. Scotland has the most forests, but half are non-native pines planted closely in plantations that ruin the landscape and ecology of the area. Nothing grows underneath them as in a normal forest, compared to forests in England many in Scotland are actually quite poor and managed solely for timber.

Forests in England are fewer in number but it preserves more ancient woodlands than Scotland and a higher percentage of the native tree species. The native tree species are overwhelmingly broad-leaf, the only conifers native to Britain are Juniper, Scots Pine and Yew.
English woodlands were traditionally coppiced which is a way of harvesting wood which allows the tree to regenerate. Coppiced trees actually live much longer than they would naturally, ash for example lives for 150 years but if coppiced every 10 years it can live for 500. When the woods were coppiced it allowed new plants into the woods but didn't totally get rid of all the trees as with the ugly plantations in Scotland. The English grazed pigs in the woods which routed in the soil allowing for seeds to become established and fulfilled the role of their wild ancestor, the wild boar.

Basically, the remains of the natural environment in Britain is generally seen as a commodity to be used and consumed like everything else. Most of the natural countryside is really managed and subject to intensive farming, so it never reaches again a state of wild "naturalness", because that's not very productive in terms of raw material. A mate visiting from Sweden was puzzled when he saw the woodland in England, planted in neat little rows. It was depressing, even worse than an industrial wasteland.

Most of the country is used for something, there are no areas which haven't been influenced by man at least a little.
But Sweden? do we really want to look like that? A monotony of pines with the occasional lake? I don't know where you live, but it must be some boring area because if you get out a bit you'll find the landscape is very varied. There's nice, semi-natural forests in the south, moors in the northern hills and a great coastline. The Midlands is perhaps the dullest part of the country and the areas immediately around the cities, but if you get out a bit there are some great places.

I read some time ago that there's a small private woodland somewhere in England, that's kept free of human activity and allowed to grow as it may. Conservationists and some scientists keep its location a secret from the general public.

Ha - there's loads of them and they're nothing special, they're usually full of brambles and an impenetrable mess with not much to look at. I used to volunteer with conservationists, areas such as that were often cleared and the trees thinned slightly to allow light to reach the ground so that flowers and other plants could grow.

The traditional management techniques of coppicing were abandoned when the country started importing wood which made a lot of the old coppiced woodlands become a virtual wasteland. By coppicing humans are basically fulfilling the role of the beaver (which we drive extinct for its furs), so coppicing is actually the natural state of things.

There are a few ancient woodlands dotted around, especially along steep ravines and along some upland streams.


What you are suffering to is called "natural succession", in England (and most of Britain) it goes a bit like this:

1. First the weeds take over and the brambles and other thorn plants such as blackthorn create a thicket
2. Then pioneer species such as Elder, sycamore and especially Ash come in and colonise
3. The Ash usually wins out and creates the beginings of a woodland and it makes the conditions right for oak
4. The oaks start to appear and other plants establish such as a few yews and holly with ferns and wildflowers colonising the ground below
5. When a optimum mix is established it becomes the "climax woodland" and stabilises

Woodlands don't stand still, natural events affect them:

• Beavers cut down trees (if they weren't extinct anyway)
• Some diseased trees die whilst other species are shaded out
• Squirrels and deer ring bark and kill some plants whilst Wild boar disturb the ground and create conditions for new plants to grow
• Floods, wind and lightining strikes open up areas and create glades and meadows and on poorer land such as hills, moorland or heath
• Forest fires don;t really happen in Britain, a old saying goes is that British woods when green burn like wet asbestos, but moorlands and heaths will catch fire and they are adapted to it

I'd like to walk there sometime. As someone who grew up in a very urban area, the peace and natural beauty of the countryside always appealed to me. I've been an environmentalist for as long as I remember.

Travel around the countryside a bit. I grew up in the suburbs between the town and countryside and as a kid would play around rivers and woodlands. Sure, the fields can be quite boring, but the rivers, streams, woods, moors, lakes, hills and little caves dotted about fill it full of interesting places.
If you want to replace it with trees then you risk swapping one monotony for another one. This country does need more trees and there is a lot of potential to plant or let regenerate marginal land such as river valleys, but we shouldn't go over the top.
Scotland is 25% forest - half of that is non-native plantations, this is the crap the forestry commission plants:



Then England with less woodland, but much more of it of the native species and not ugly plantations. These are more typical of England:






These things, bluebells are literally everywhere in late spring in the woods around here. This isn't exactly some amazing part of the country neither, its just Cheshire between the lowlands and the hills.



This is what England would look like without the fields and if it were heavily forested. This is an enclave of that in the Wye Valley:

It looks like Wallonia but its the Anglo-Welsh border. It's nice but not that nice. The odd few fields with grazing animals or orchards would be nice.

And finally, I've noticed many environmentalists are from cities too. Often they lack actual experience of the actual environment they try to teach us about, there's a lot of ideology and little first-hand knowledge behind it. Volunteer with the national trust or something, they do a lot in the national parks and its a great way to see the landscape.

Oh, and the typical environmentalist line of obscuring everything with trees misses a few things out, mainly the other habitats and especially those of traditional farming methods such as wildflower meadows (which occur in woodlands naturally too):



It is modern intensive farming which is ruining landscapes, not farming per se.

Browse this thread, to get an idea of how varied the UK actually is.

A good book to read is "Woodlands" by Oliver Rackham as well.

[Trog]

I think the love of countryside is in our blood. The smells, the sounds, the atmosphere. The mystery. I only learned the other day that a tall tree near the woods where I walk my dog is estimated to be 3000 years old. However, I like to be conveniently near cities too.

[Albion]

of course its boring. You Brits dont have guns so you cant go shoot, cant go hunt, cant even blow stuff up for fun. I doubt 4 wheelin is popular. Its probably too cold for clothing optional lake parties like me and my friends do down south here, I guess at some point your options are kind of limited.

FFS, yes we do! Why do Americans think there are no guns here? You join a shooting club, get a riffle and a license and usually a good dog, preferably a springer spaniel or a Labrador and some tweed if you join a posh club.
Then you head of to the woods to shoot a few pheasant and deer or up to the moors if you're rich to bag a few grouse and red deer.





and if you own a manor house then you go hunting foxes like this:


This must remind you of the good old days, watch out fox, the redcoats are coming!



But if you're dirt poor then you just go fishing which is probably the most popular shall we say, sport.

Damn yanks, we were shooting at things before your country was even created. One of our kings died in a hunting accident involving an arrow, an "accident" apparently.

And four wheeling? You mean like quad bikes / atvs and land rovers? That's popular in the national parks much to the dismay of hikers.

I want to live out on the moors. Need to make money.... and the internet connection might be a bit poor to.

Go to one of the larger villages in the north then, there's loads of them.

I live on the coast at the moment, and can't wait to get back inland near some woods and cloughs!

Do you have many cloughs in Devon? What do they call them?

I love country living, what about farm work and secondary education?

Farm workers get paid minimum wage for working extremely long hours and doing very demanding work. I worked as one before, its satisfying and never boring but it pisses you off to think about how much better paid some pleb sitting in an office is whilst you're doing 6 till 10 through the summer.
Oh how that summer just flew by.

it is boring,if you are not a 60 year old

I'm not even 30 and don't find it boring, I find it highly interesting. Do I have the mindset of a 60 year old?

I think if England (and parts of Austria) reintroduced some of the indigenous fauna that was killed off, the countryside might become a more interesting place to visit again.

All we're missing are wolves, bears, beavers and boar. The farming and forestry lobbies would never allow for it.

Mountain biking, camping, hill trekking, fishing, river rafting, canoeing, four wheeling, shooting etc.. Go visit some nice castles, little village pubs. You can choose to be bored or not. Personally I just like the slow pace, solitude and nice views. Although England does have more restricted Freedom to roam laws.

Thinking about doing the West Highland way. I live in a concrete jungle council estate, but on the edge of town.

Anything over 600m is open access, in the lowlands you have to stick to the paths and designated open spaces. In practice though farmers don't give a damn if you wonder off the path and I've technically trespassed my whole life. Most farmers would be against the lowland being open access in law because they'd get a load of people walking everywhere, but they turn a blind eye to the odd individual doing it.

A question for native Brits:
Are most of the ruins of castles, stone circles, and abbeys, cathedrals, etc, free to roam? Or are most of them private?

Castles are mostly open to the public via paths or owned by the National Trust which preserves them for the public, the same goes for stone circles.
Abbeys and Cathedrals are open-access, the ruined ones are owned by the National Trust, the operating ones are still run as churches which you can go into.
The local castle around here is open access anyway, so's the circle, but the manor house you have to pay £3 to get in. No cathedrals around here though, but the churches in the countryside are left open and the ones around here are all Norman and Anglian.

I miss the atmosphere of those pubs so much (especially in winter next to the fire place), there is so much ethnic culture there...it's weird no Brit opened such a pub in Australia..

It wouldn't be the same, the countryside is different and there's no 300 year old buildings to house it in.

I think the love of countryside is in our blood. The smells, the sounds, the atmosphere. The mystery. I only learned the other day that a tall tree near the woods where I walk my dog is estimated to be 3000 years old. However, I like to be conveniently near cities too.

Probably a yew, there's a 2000 year old one 5 minutes away from me. Most of them are in churches, they were sacred to the neolithic people, Celts and Germanic and churches were often built on their former worship sites.

A lot of the yew trees in churchyards are older than the churches. The oldest is in Scotland, the fortingail yew I think it's called, 5,000 years old.

[Ashley]

It's true: the tragic remnant of the world not yet concreted over is now generally considered boring by those who need constant entertainment.

Most people are deprived these days. If you never knew the country, you never knew life. Driving out to the country is my way of cleaning the muck out of my head from working in a city.