The East Midlands
The East Midlands has traditionally been my second home, and the place of my birth. As a result, there’ve been quite a few caching visits over various times. I’m calling it that because the majority of my life (just) has been spent in Milton Keynes. As I sit here right now, it’s my current home.
My parents have always lived in the area. They were brought up in the North-West Leicestershire / South Derbyshire area. When I was a little kid they moved to rural Nottinghamshire because my dad applied for (and got) a new job at one of the power stations in Megawatt Valley.
My enduring memory is of being bought up in Southwell. I was six when we moved there. It’s where I feel like I’m from, as I have little memory of the years before we moved there. Once me and my brother had gone, and both parents had retired, they moved back to their home area.
So when I had my own children, North-West Leicestershire became “Granny and Grandad’s”, and hence we visited the area pretty regularly. We probably went to visit between six and ten times a year while the kids were little.
Where is it?
Anyway, you’ll see here that I’ve included here some caching days from all counties in the region. In Geocaching terms, the region consists of the ceremonial counties of:
I personally dispute the presence of Northamptonshire in this list. Its character is very different (in my opinion) to the others. It feels much more like southern or eastern England. And anyway, it was only a few miles from my previous home in [Milton Keynes]], so I can’t accept Northampton or Brackley (for instance) as being the same region as Lincoln or Nottingham or Derbyshire. But here we are. It’s not, in truth, a hill I’m willing to die on. In geocaching stats, it’s in the East Midlands.
I suppose, if I sit back and think about it, the East Midlands is quite diverse. Rutland and Leicestershire are quite similar. Much of Lincolnshire is like Cambridgeshire, but the top half is probably more like Yorkshire. Nottinghamshire is fairly uniform, as is Leicestershire. Derbyshire is a (proverbial) county of two halves. The bottom end is in the Midlands. The top is pretty much in the north of England. Just to complicate matters, the area around North-West Leicestershire and South Derbyshire is also very close to Warwickshire and Staffordshire, and those two are definitely not in the East Midlands.
I guess I have to draw the line somewhere. Well, technically, someone else drew the line somewhere. I’m just having to work with it.
Individual Posts
Here are all the blog posts I’ve written about the East Midlands.
