I would think it would be very difficult to see all of it in one visit, as although the UK isn't a very big country compared to America getting to some parts of it can take quite a while. The further north part is on the Shetland Islands which is a 12 hour ferry journey out of Aberdeen, the northern most city in Scotland. The Shetland Islands are a lovely if somewhat bleak place (it's mostly moorland, peat bogs and sand dunes) on the same latitude as southern Norway. I'm probably slightly biased about how nice the Shetlands are as I spent a couple of summers up there training as an archaeologist and excavating a Iron Age broch. (Which is basically a massive dry stone wall tower about 3 to 4 floors tall and built about 2000 years ago)
Bradford itself has a fairly poor name in the UK for being rundown and a bit of a dump. And in a way that's true, the city never really found a replacment for the all the jobs that went when the woollen mills stopped being profitable in the 50s and 60s and closed. So there are lots of derelict mills in the city, a massive hole in the ground where they were going to build a new shopping centre but money ran out (it's been there for 6 years now) and unemployment is above the national average, some areas are very poor (in the area of Bradford I live in one of the primary schools (children aged 5-11) had nearly 60% of the children on free meals because their parents either have no work or only just earn minimum wage. - I was looking at school stats as my son starts school in september next year). This is true though of a lot of area in the cities/big town in the industrial centre of the UK (which is roughly the central third of the country).
This post is getting quite long and rambly now, but yes there are some lovely bits of the UK and some not so great ones too. Also if you've got any questions about odd British stuff that google doesn't seem to know/or just is too vague to google I might be able to help.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2013-08-20 12:28 pm (UTC)Bradford itself has a fairly poor name in the UK for being rundown and a bit of a dump. And in a way that's true, the city never really found a replacment for the all the jobs that went when the woollen mills stopped being profitable in the 50s and 60s and closed. So there are lots of derelict mills in the city, a massive hole in the ground where they were going to build a new shopping centre but money ran out (it's been there for 6 years now) and unemployment is above the national average, some areas are very poor (in the area of Bradford I live in one of the primary schools (children aged 5-11) had nearly 60% of the children on free meals because their parents either have no work or only just earn minimum wage. - I was looking at school stats as my son starts school in september next year). This is true though of a lot of area in the cities/big town in the industrial centre of the UK (which is roughly the central third of the country).
This post is getting quite long and rambly now, but yes there are some lovely bits of the UK and some not so great ones too. Also if you've got any questions about odd British stuff that google doesn't seem to know/or just is too vague to google I might be able to help.