Geography
Parts of this region of England are characterised by the flatness of the land, partly consisting of fenland and reclaimed marshland, though much of Suffolk and Norfolk is gently undulating.
Although water plays a significant role in the fenland and broadland landscapes, the area is among the driest in the United Kingdom. During the summer months, tinder-dry conditions are frequently experienced, occasionally resulting in field and heath fires.
Maximum temperature ranges from 5–10 °C (41–50 °F) in the winter to 20–25 °C (68–77 °F) in the summer, although temperatures have been known to reach 35 °C (95 °F) in recent years. Sunshine totals tend to be higher towards the coastal areas.
Major rivers include Suffolk's Stour, running through country beloved of the painter John Constable, and the Nene. The River Cam is a tributary of the Great Ouse and gives its name to Cambridge. The Orwell and its source the Gipping together find the sea at Ipswich. The Norfolk and Suffolk Broads form a network of waterways between Norwich and the coast and are popular for recreational boating.
The supposed flatness of the Norfolk landscape is noted in Noël Coward's Private Lives— "Very flat, Norfolk" — and the history of its waterways and drainage forms the backdrop to Graham Swift's novel Waterland. The region also figures in works by L.P. Hartley, Arthur Ransome and Dorothy L. Sayers, among many others.
Agriculture has always been important in this fertile region. The landscape of Cambridgeshire and Norfolk has been heavily influenced by Dutch technology, from the use of red clay roof tiles to the draining of The Fens.
The region has a wide range of small-scale holiday resorts ranging from the traditional coastal towns of Felixstowe and Lowestoft in Suffolk and Great Yarmouth in Norfolk to small fishing villages like Aldeburgh and Southwold in Suffolk. Other tourist attractions include historic towns like Bury St. Edmunds, Cambridge and Ely.
Read more about this topic: East Anglia
Famous quotes containing the word geography:
“Where the heart is, there the muses, there the gods sojourn, and not in any geography of fame. Massachusetts, Connecticut River, and Boston Bay, you think paltry places, and the ear loves names of foreign and classic topography. But here we are; and, if we tarry a little, we may come to learn that here is best. See to it, only, that thyself is here;—and art and nature, hope and fate, friends, angels, and the Supreme Being, shall not absent from the chamber where thou sittest.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“Yet America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)