East Midlands

Travel Guide Europe United Kingdom England East Midlands

Introduction

The East Midlands is a region in east England, covering the southern half of the Peak District and the cities of Derby, Nottingham and Leicester.

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Geography

The region's high point; Kinder Scout at 636 metres is located in the Peak District area of the southern Pennines in north-west Derbyshire near Glossop. Other upland, hilly areas of some 95 to 280 metres in altitude, together with associated lakes and reservoirs rise in and around the Charnwood Forest area NNW of Leicester and in the border country around the county and regional boundaries and in the Lincolnshire Wolds.

The region's major rivers; the Nene, the Soar, the Trent and the Welland tend to flow in a north-easterly direction towards the Humber and the Wash. The Derwent, conversely, rises in the High Peak before flowing south to join the Trent some two miles before its conflux with the Soar.

The centre of the East Midlands area lies roughly between Bingham, Nottinghamshire and Bottesford, Leicestershire. The geographical centre of England lies in Higham on the Hill in west Leicestershire, close to the boundary between the East and West Midlands. Some 88% of the land is rural in character, although agriculture accounts for less than three percent of the region's jobs.

Lincolnshire is the only maritime county of the six, with a true North Sea coastline of about 50 kilometrs due to the protection afforded by Spurn Head and the North Norfolk foreshore. Church Flatts Farm in Coton in the Elms, South Derbyshire, is the furthest place from the sea in the UK (112 kilometres). In April 1936 the first Ordnance Survey trig point was sited at Cold Ashby in Northamptonshire.

The Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts and The Wildlife Trusts are based next to the River Trent and Newark Castle railway station. The National Centre for Earth Observation is at the University of Leicester.

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Counties

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Cities

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Getting There

By Plane

East Midlands Airport (EMA) is the main gateway, located about 25 kilometres from Derby and also the main gateway of Leicester and Nottingham. Ryanair flies to Alicante, Belfast, Bergerac, Berlin, Budapest, Bydgoszcz, Carcassonne, Dinard, Dublin, Faro, Girona, Granada, Ibiza, Knock, Krakow, Lanzarote, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Limoges, Lodz, Málaga, Marrakech, Milan, Murcia, Nantes, Palma de Mallorca, Pisa, Reus (Barcelona), Riga, Rimini, Rome, Rzeszów, Tenerife-South, Turin, Valencia and Wroclaw.
Many more budget airlines and charter airlines fly to places throughout Europe, including Bmibaby, Thomas Cook Airlines and Thomson Airways.

To/from the airport
The airport has excellent connections to the motorway network by using the M1 and M42. The closest railway station is East Midlands Parkway, which is 6 kilometres away. If you book a taxi in advance you can have a reduced price getting to the railway station, as buses don't go here anymore. Skylink branded bus services operate to and from Leicester, Nottingham, Derby, Loughborough and Coalville.

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