Land's End

John o' Groats is a village 2.5 mi (4 km) northeast of Canisbay, Caithness, in the far north of Scotland. John o' Groats lies on Great Britain's northeastern tip, and is popular with tourists as one end of the longest distance between two inhabited points on the British mainland, with Land's End in Cornwall lying 876 mi (1,410 km) southwest, but it is not the northernmost point of mainland Great Britain, which is the nearby Dunnet Head.

Land's End to John o' Groats is the traversal of the length of the island of Great Britain between two extremities, in the southwest and northeast. The traditional distance by road is 874 miles (1,407 km) and takes most cyclists 10 to 14 days; the record for running the route is nine days. Off-road walkers typically walk about 1,200 miles (1,900 km) and take two or three months for the expedition. Signposts indicate the traditional distance at each end.Land's End is the traditionally acknowledged extreme western point of mainland England. It is in western Cornwall at the end of the Penwith peninsula. The O.S. Grid Reference of the road end is SW342250, Postcode TR19 7AA. In fact it, or strictly speaking Dr Syntax's Head, SW341253, a few hundred yards NW of the road end, is mainland England's most westerly point. The most southerly point is Lizard Point, about 9 miles (14 km) further south. Land's End is sometimes reckoned incorrectly as mainland Great Britain's most southwesterly point. This accolade belongs to Gwennap Head, SW365215, which is at least 2 miles (3.2 km) further south than Dr Syntax's Head but only about 1.5 miles (2.4 km) less west. John o' Groats is the traditionally acknowledged extreme northern point of mainland Scotland, in northeastern Caithness, O.S. Grid Reference ND380735, Postcode KW1 4YR. The actual northernmost point is Dunnet Head about 2 miles (3 km) further north. The point that is farthest by road from Land's End is Duncansby Head, about 2 miles (3 km) east of John o' Groats. Duncansby Head is also the most northeasterly point of the British mainland.

Picturesque is an aesthetic ideal introduced into English cultural debate in 1782 by William Gilpin in Observations on the River Wye, and Several Parts of South Wales, etc. Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty; made in the Summer of the Year 1770, a practical book which instructed England's leisured travellers to examine "the face of a country by the rules of picturesque beauty". Picturesque, along with the aesthetic and cultural strands of Gothic and Celticism, was a part of the emerging Romantic sensibility of the 18th century.

Samuel Johnson, often called Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer, editor, and lexicographer. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography calls him "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history".

Plantlife is the international conservation membership charity working to secure a world rich in wild plants and fungi. It is the only UK membership charity dedicated to conserving wild plants and fungi in their natural habitats and helping people to enjoy and learn about them. HM King Charles III is patron of the charity.

Cornwall is the county that forms the tip of the southwestern peninsula of England; this area has a mild and warm climate regulated by the Gulf Stream. The mild climate allows rich plant cover, such as palm trees in the far south and west of the county and in the Isles of Scilly, due to sub-tropical conditions in the summer.

The Longships is the name given to a group of rocky islets situated approximately 11⁄4 miles (2 km) west of Land's End, Cornwall, United Kingdom. The islets are marked by the Longships Lighthouse, the current structure being first lit in December 1873. The islets are very popular for recreational diving, the sea has clear water with prolific marine life and flora.

An islet is a very small, often unnamed island. Most definitions are not precise, but some suggest that an islet has little or no vegetation and cannot support human habitation. It may be made of rock, sand and/or hard coral; may be permanent or tidal ; and may exist in the sea, lakes, rivers or any other sizeable bodies of water.

The Isles of Scilly is an archipelago off the southwestern tip of Cornwall, England. One of the islands, St Agnes, is the most southerly point in Britain, being over four miles further south than the most southerly point of the British mainland at Lizard Point.

King Arthur is a legendary king of Britain, and a central figure in the medieval literary tradition known as the Matter of Britain. In Welsh sources, Arthur is portrayed as a leader of the post-Roman Britons in battles against Anglo-Saxon invaders of Britain in the late 5th and early 6th centuries. He first appears in two early medieval historical sources, the Annales Cambriae and the Historia Brittonum, but these date to 300 years after he is supposed to have lived, and most historians who study the period do not consider him a historical figure. His name also occurs in early Welsh poetic sources such as Y Gododdin. The character developed through Welsh mythology, appearing either as a great warrior defending Britain from human and supernatural enemies or as a magical figure of folklore, sometimes associated with the Welsh otherworld Annwn.

Granite is a coarse-grained (phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies underground. It is common in the continental crust of Earth, where it is found in igneous intrusions. These range in size from dikes only a few centimeters across to batholiths exposed over hundreds of square kilometers.

Orthoclase, or orthoclase feldspar (endmember formula KAlSi3O8), is an important tectosilicate mineral which forms igneous rock. The name is from the Ancient Greek for "straight fracture", because its two cleavage planes are at right angles to each other. It is a type of potassium feldspar, also known as K-feldspar. The gem known as moonstone (see below) is largely composed of orthoclase.

In geology, country rock is the rock native to an area, in contrast to any intrusion of viscous geologic material, commonly magma, or perhaps rock salt or unconsolidated sediments.

Longships Lighthouse is an active 19th-century lighthouse about 1.25 mi (2.0 km) off the coast of Land's End in Cornwall, England. It is the second lighthouse to be built on Carn Bras, the highest of the Longships islets which rises 39 feet (12 m) above high water level. In 1988 the lighthouse was automated, and the keepers withdrawn. It is now remotely monitored from the Trinity House Operations & Planning Centre in Harwich, Essex.

Belinus the Great was a legendary king of the Britons, as recounted by Geoffrey of Monmouth. He was the son of Dunvallo Molmutius and brother of Brennius. He was probably named after the ancient god Belenus.

The River Exe in England rises at Exe Head, near the village of Simonsbath, on Exmoor in Somerset, 8.4 kilometres (5 mi) from the Bristol Channel coast, but flows more or less directly due south, so that most of its length lies in Devon. It flows for 60 miles (96 km) and reaches the sea at a substantial ria, the Exe Estuary, on the south coast of Devon. Historically, its lowest bridging point was the Old Exe Bridge in Exeter, the largest settlement on the river, but there is now a viaduct for the M5 motorway about 3 kilometres (2 mi) south of the city centre.

The River Severn, at 220 miles (354 km) long, is the longest river in Great Britain. It is also the river with the most voluminous flow of water by far in all of England and Wales, with an average flow rate of 107 m3/s (3,800 cu ft/s) at Apperley, Gloucestershire. It rises in the Cambrian Mountains in mid Wales, at an altitude of 2,001 feet (610 m), on the Plynlimon massif, which lies close to the Ceredigion/Powys border near Llanidloes. The river then flows through Shropshire, Worcestershire and Gloucestershire. The county towns of Shrewsbury and Gloucester and the City of Worcester lie on its course.

The River Dee is a river in the United Kingdom. It flows through parts of both Wales and England, forming part of the border between the two countries.

John Taylor was an English poet who dubbed himself "The Water Poet".

The Logan Rock near the village of Treen in Cornwall, England, UK, is an example of a logan or rocking stone. Although it weighs some 80 tons, it was dislodged in 1824 by a group of British seamen, intent on showing what the Navy could do. However following complaints from local residents for whom the rock had become a tourist attraction and source of income, the seamen were forced to restore it. Today the Logan Rock still rocks, but with much less ease than it did in the past. The South West Coast Path, which follows the coast of south-west England from Somerset to Dorset passes by on the cliffs to the north.

Porthcurno is a small village covering a small valley and beach on the south coast of Cornwall, England in the United Kingdom. It is the main settlement in a civil and an ecclesiastical parish, both named St Levan, which comprise Porthcurno, diminutive St Levan itself, Trethewey and Treen.

The Luftwaffe was the aerial-warfare branch of the German Wehrmacht before and during World War II. Germany's military air arms during World War I, the Luftstreitkräfte of the Imperial Army and the Marine-Fliegerabteilung of the Imperial Navy, had been disbanded in May 1920 in accordance with the terms of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles which banned Germany from having any air force.

Cardiff is the capital and largest city of Wales. Cardiff had a population of 362,310 in 2021, forms a principal area officially known as the City and County of Cardiff, and the city is the eleventh-largest in the United Kingdom. Located in the south-east of Wales and in the Cardiff Capital Region, Cardiff is the county town of the historic county of Glamorgan and in 1974–1996 of South Glamorgan. It belongs to the Eurocities network of the largest European cities. A small town until the early 19th century, its prominence as a port for coal when mining began in the region helped its expansion. In 1905, it was ranked as a city and in 1955 proclaimed capital of Wales. Cardiff Built-up Area covers a larger area outside the county boundary, including the towns of Dinas Powys and Penarth.

The Normandy landings were the landing operations and associated airborne operations on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. Codenamed Operation Neptune and often referred to as D-Day, it was the largest seaborne invasion in history. The operation began the liberation of France and laid the foundations of the Allied victory on the Western Front.