Shropshire
Shropshire the UK’s largest land-locked county, is large, land-locked, and right next to Wales. Its south is hilly and sheep-filled and provides the Shropshire stereotype, while the north is flatter and less exciting, but does contain its largest town, Telford, and the county town, Shrewsbury.It is occasionally known as Salop by compulsive abbreviators, but this has gone out of use because it means ‘bitch’ in French.
History
Shropshire has been host to all manner of exciting battles between the English and the Welsh, and it is rumoured that there are places in Shrewsbury where it is still legal to shoot Welshmen with a longbow.
It was also the cradle of the industrial revolution. With Coalbrookdale, where there is coal, a brook and a dale, and Ironbridge, where the World’s first iron bridge was constructed, all the necessary resources were in place for Shropshire to set in motion an extended chain of events which may yet result in the entire Earth becoming a pressure cooker.