Tranquillity in England

, < Environment quality UK

Tranquil countryside
The largest remaining areas of deep, unfragmented tranquil countryside in England are mostly in National Parks – Dartmoor and Exmoor, the Yorkshire Dales, the North York Moors, the Lake District and Northumberland National Park. Two officially designated Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONBs) – the Forest of Bowland and the North Pennines – also harbour very large areas of deep tranquil countryside. All of England’s National Parks – including the New Forest in Hampshire and the new South Downs National Park – still contain substantial areas of highly tranquil countryside, as do all the AONBs. Many areas of ‘ordinary’ countryside with no official designation remain rich in tranquillity, including some parts of the South East – the most built up and pressurised English region.

People value tranquillity
In a YouGov opinion poll commissioned by CPRE, tranquillity – and its various manifestations – was mentioned, unprompted, by 72% of 2,248 respondents as one of the things they most enjoyed or appreciated about the countryside. The words people mainly used were peace and quiet, relaxation, tranquil, calm, serene, wide open spaces, freedom, escape, solitude and getting away from towns, cities, crowds, concrete, buildings. 34% mentioned ‘fresh air’ as one of the things they most appreciated about the countryside, 20% mentioned the quality of scenery, views and landscape and 19% mentioned some aspect of nature, wildlife or flora and fauna.

Random facts

 * 27 square miles of greenfield are lost each year to development, an area nearly the size of Leicester.
 * 11.2% of England’s land area is urbanised, with only the Netherlands and Belgium more built up in Western Europe; European Environment Agency.
 * A CPRE analysis of satellite data found that from 1993 to 2000 the proportion of England’s land area from which people could view a truly dark night sky fell from 15% to 11%

Related Wikipedia content

 * Tranquillity