The warm South-West

The south-western tip of Britain, or the West Country, is the only region in Britain with an increasing population of young and old. It is the most popular tourist area for British people in the United Kingdom. It has the country's mildest weather and palm trees grow along the sea front of some holiday resorts in the counties of Devon and Cornwall. There are hundreds of little fishing villages on the south-west coast. A well-known one is St Ives on the north Cornish coast. It has always attracted painters and a new modern art gallery was opened there in 1993.

The West Country also has three areas of wild, open countryside, known as moors. The largest of these is Dartmoor National Park. The moor is so isolated that in the nineteenth century a prison was built in the middle of it. Britain's worst criminals are kept there.

Michael Vaughan-Rees, Geraldine Sweeney, Picot Cassidy: In Britain; Cornelsen Verlag, 2000, page 81