In the Midlands, Central England

 "Baldwin thought Europe was a bore, and Chamberlain thought it was only a greater Birmingham." -- Winston Churchill

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(in Central England) The Midlands are commonly subdivided into the East and the West Midlands. The East Midlands include the historic and geographic counties of Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, and Rutland. The West Midlands comprise Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Shropshire, Herefordshire, and Worcestershire. The West Midlands contains a heavy concentration of large industrial cities, including Birmingham, Coventry, Leicester, Dudley, Stoke-on-Trent, Walsall, and Wolverhampton. (Parts of the region are rural, and agriculture remains economically important.)

+ Should you be looking for quintessentially English countryside -- green valleys, chocolate-box villages of black-and-white timbered houses, woodlands steeped in legend such as Nottinghamshire's Sherwood Forest, and stately homes that look like the last lord of the manor just clip-clopped out of the stables -- you will find it here in the heart of England.

+ You will also discover find some relics of centuries of industrial history, exemplified by the World Heritage–listed mills of Ironbridge and the Derwent Valley, and by today's dynamic cities, including Britain's second-largest, Birmingham (shown here) -- a canal-woven industrial crucible reinvented as a cultural and creative hub, with striking 21st-century architecture and vibrant nightlife. Beyond them are tumbling hills where the air is so clean you can taste it. Walkers and cyclists flock to these pristine areas, particularly the Peak District National Park and the Shropshire Hills in the Marches, along the English–Welsh border, to vanish into the vastness of the landscape.

+ The Midlands are a part of England that broadly correspond to the Kingdom of Mercia of the Early Middle Ages, bordered by the England–Wales border, Northern England, and Southern England. The Midlands were important in the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries. The area is predominantly low-lying and flat apart from isolated hills such as Turners Hill within the Black Country conurbation (at 271 meters) with extensive views. Upland areas lie in the west and north of the region with the Shropshire Hills to the west, close to the England–Wales border and the Peak District area of the southern Pennines in the north of the region. The Shropshire Hills reach a height of 540 meters at Brown Clee Hill and include the Long Mynd, Clee Hills, and Stiperstones ridge. Wenlock Edge, running through the middle of the Shropshire Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), is a long, low ridge, which extends for more than 15 miles (24 km). The Peak District reaches heights of between 300 meters and 600 meters; Kinder Scout is the highest point at 636 meters. Further south, the Welsh border reaches more than 700 meters high, at Black Mountain -- which is the highest point in Herefordshire.