England: The Map
In my England series on Nebula and YouTube, I took a road trip through every historic English county, and filmed something interesting in each of them. Here's a map of those counties and their videos, as they’re released.
Explore the map
Click on any highlighted county to see its video, or scroll down for the full list.
Locations approximated. Map based on data from the Historic Counties Border Project. This was meant to be an old-school HTML image <map> but it isn’t supported properly on iOS Safari and I’m a bit grumpy about that.
| County | Video | |
|---|---|---|
|
Leicestershire | I helped break a 142-year-old bell, and that's okay. |
|
Rutland | They can fly 200 miles with no fuel. Here's how. |
|
Lincolnshire | I missed the evidence. Can you spot it? |
|
Nottinghamshire | These people walk towards mining disasters |
|
West Riding of Yorkshire | These mannequins can bleed. |
|
North Riding of Yorkshire | I finally got to drive Yorkshire's tiny boats |
|
East Riding of Yorkshire | If you found candy with my name in it, here's why |
|
Northumberland | Oh no, I sympathized with a Victorian arms dealer |
|
Durham | The mist that keeps the Tyne Tunnels safe |
|
Westmorland | This man stops people drowning in quicksand |
|
Lancashire | Pulling the lever is the easy part |
|
Cheshire | Can a 70-year-old telescope still be useful? |
|
Derbyshire | We can't invent a robot better than these ferrets |
|
Staffordshire | I got hit in the teeth with 900-year-old antlers |
|
Warwickshire | I launched the Mighty Trebuchet. |
|
Worcestershire | If I get this wrong, 50,000 people will hear it. |
|
Shropshire | I have a weird conspiracy theory about this bridge |
|
Herefordshire | I get excited about an ampersand. |
|
Gloucestershire | I'm so glad this hidden monorail broke down. |
|
Oxfordshire | two nerds try to build a wall |
|
Northamptonshire | This 100-year-old ride must never change again. |
|
Buckinghamshire | How do you keep 8,995 codebreakers secret? |
North Riding of Yorkshire
I finally got to drive Yorkshire's tiny boats
East Riding of Yorkshire
If you found candy with my name in it, here's why
Buckinghamshire
How do you keep 8,995 codebreakers secret?
FAQs
Why don’t the videos have a map in-vision?
I did consider adding a map to the introduction, but I didn’t for a few reasons:
- because of the number of counties and the resolution of screens, it looked too information-dense and “fiddly”
- it slowed the introduction of every episode down far too much
- it could confuse viewers who arrive part-way through the series and think they need to see earlier episodes for the current one to make sense
Given that the location of the county is almost always irrelevant to the episode (and can be checked in a moment by anyone interested), it didn’t make sense to include it. But for those who want some geographic context, the map is here!
Was it one continuous road trip?
Yes! It took about eight weeks and more than 5,000 miles of driving. The original plan was one video a day: that would have left no time for retakes or rest, and my producers, the wonderful Guy and Cambria from Penny4, correctly talked me out of that.
Are we seeing the videos in the order you filmed them?
Not quite. They’re switched round a bit to make sure there aren’t two similar videos together, and put in an order that “feels” right. However, the order is roughly correct; you’ll see my hair gets longer over the course of the series!
Why the historic counties?
They’re unambiguous, well documented, and (crucially) there are only 39 of them. (The Map Men can explain why English counties are complicated.) My apologies to the Isle of Wight.
Why only England? Why not Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland?
Because 39 counties was already more than enough to deal with! Counties in the other Home Nations are more complicated, too. Maybe one day.