Basically we're the linguistic and genetic flotsam and jetsam of Europe that happened to wash up on these shores. Not so much the Bulldog Breed as the scrappy mongrels of the continent.
Even in "modern" times, it can take quite a while to get from say Plymouth to Inverness. I remember my mum (Devonian) recalling how long that trip took back in the '60s. Then she got posted to the islands on the north left and getting back home really took some time - the ferries can be a bit sporadic when the weather gets grotty 8)
Try not to look at the map of Europe as a driver of a vehicle capable of >100mph. Imagine there are very few roads, except what the Romans left behind. There are not many people and a lot of trees. Police is a concept that is yet to be invented although the Shire Reeves (Sheriff) is an early model. Most people's horizons probably don't stretch much more than 10 miles for their entire life. Witches are real and doctors were scarce and scary - they hadn't even invented the leech at this time.
That said, some folk did travel quite a long way. Bede famously recalls a story of a pope who remarks on some slaves in a market in Rome: "... they are surely Angels ...". He was talking about some Angles who were taken from these isles who he found rather good looking.
If you really want to get a flavour of just how complicated things are genetically here, let alone in the rest of Europe, try Stephen Oppenheimer's "The origins of the British" (1-84119 894 3)
As always, truth is not absolute but if you stop at the blandishments from that Geoff bloke off of Monmouth or that Walter Scott geezer, let alone whatever bollocks us English come up with, then it's downhill all the way to ... erm the present day.
It shows an empire based around the rim of the North Sea and you can immediately see why when you compare the times to reach anywhere over land compared to the see.
So I live in the Hudson Valley, upstate NY. I noticed some local place names that were surprisingly Midwestern: Mount Illinois, Ohioville, etc. Weird, I thought, I wonder how that came to be.
Turns out it was groups of settlers traveling from slightly further east -- it's only about 200 miles to Boston, the furthest-away those settlers could be starting from, on land -- hoping to colonize the fertile lands of the newly opened Northwest Territories after the Revolution who just gave up and settled here.
Now, the Northwest Territories were another 500-1000 miles west of where I'm at, and where I'm at was colonized in the 17th century, so there was no mistaking one for the other. What must of happened was, one tenth to one fifth of the way in to their journey, these settlers got their wagons stuck in the swamps here, looked around at the rocky, unplowable mountains around them, and said "fuck it, we'll settle here", before naming their town "Ohioville" so when they wrote back to Boston they could pretend they reached their destination.
I wonder how often this sort of thing happened. I imagine it was pretty common, knowing how difficult travel was back then.
Maybe you still do; maybe you have realized there's something else you want more. Maybe you can give up your goal without effort; maybe you spend the rest of your life rationalizing or regretting your decision to give up when you did. Maybe your attempt cost you something that makes having or not having what you wanted irrelevant, and the rest of your life is just ashes, muddling on.
"The waters of the Channel are notoriously treacherous, which could have posed problems for the smaller boats" - https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/features/52808043
Fast shallow draught boats, well navigated can whizz over by oar and or sail in a few hours or a day or two at worst. Top Gear sent some pretty dodgy aquavans over in one program. Even I've sailed a 28 footer over to France.
Compare that to trying to walk say from Yeovil to Exeter in the SW of England. It's about 40-50 miles. Nowadays you drive via the A303/A30 or A303/A358/M5 and it takes an hour or so. Back then you have the Blackdown hills to get over and a lot of muddy tracks. I think you'd hope to get to Crewkerne or Ilminster on day one. Then Honiton on day two and then Exeter on day three. That's on foot. On horseback you could probably do it in one day and with a mule or cart probably two days. All of those towns existed back then and earlier.
The Armada was something else - huge galleons outmaneuvered by our smaller boats - once the formation was broken it was a bit horrid for them. The Spaniards had a professional admiral who knew his stuff but a wanker of a noble put in charge who made some daft decisions. Also they were supposed to meet up with a land force in Flanders to transport over to England and that did not go well. The weather did favour the English as well. Once the formation was broken they tried to go around the British Isles anti-clockwise to try and get back to Spain, which as you say means seeing some of the nastiest weather and conditions we have to offer. Quite a few spaniards who managed to make it ashore in one piece settled here and there and improved the local genetic diversity 8) QE1 refused to pay our navy, despite they had saved the nation. Back then the navy was quite heavily privatised - Sir F Drake was known as a pirate in the Caribbean or a good English patriot depending on your point of view.
Look at Boris Johnson, a mix of Turkish, french and old England
I dare you to define what Turkish, French and old England actually means. For starters: where/when does French stop and German start and vice versa? "Turkish" is just as complicated.
The mongrel nature of Britain is common for all multi border countries... and many are even Germany or Spain.
I think we should really define countries by language, mountain and seas rather than blood, and frankly even those are shaky and changing.
Maybe the best definition of a country is the largest geographical gradient that could sustain influence from a gigantic power centre without succumbing to another (for me, Paris, for the brits, London)?
Edit: downvotes suggest there’s some disagreement. I don’t think what I said is controversial or wrong, so I’d like to know the motivation
As the saying goes in the old days some people could have a signs outside a shop "No dogs, no Irishmen and no blacks allowed". Was that really true for some parts of Britain or is it just tales?
Since we're talking weird discriminatory signs though there is a sign in a bar called the Clachaig Inn which says "No Hawkers or Campbells". This goes back to the Glencoe Massacre in 1692 where members of Clan Campbell slaughtered the Glencoe McDonalds overnight, and which some people still hold a grudge about today. I hope it's just a historical curiosity though, I don't imagine they really forbid service to anyone with the surname Campbell.
edit: come to think of it I now remember another HN'er (arethuza) talking about discrimination against Catholics in Scotland being more of a thing in recent history than I had realised. I can't remember the time period in question or whether they said it was better nowadays (again, I hope it is).
I don't understand, is Boris Johnson good or bad?
"They journeyed from Greater Scythia by way of the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Pillars of Hercules, and dwelt for a long course of time in Spain among the most savage tribes, but nowhere could they be subdued by any race, however barbarous."
https://www.historyfiles.co.uk/FeaturesBritain/Medieval_Text...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A1l_Riata
NB I have stood on Dunadd with my foot in the Footprint of Fealty where kings were crowned:
I've found another blog-post with more photos about the Celtic crosses from Maramures [3], and in the comments in there someone also linked to similar crosses being found in Northern Greece/Macedonia, close to Thessaloniki [4]. Very interesting stuff.
[1] https://www.bzi.ro/morosenii-au-origini-celtice-artefactul-c...
[2] https://www.churchofscotland.org.uk/news-and-events/news/201...
[3] https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/abandoned-bogomils-grave...
[4] https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/abandoned-bogomils-grave...
Celtic crosses are a Christian thing and Christianity only got started after the Romans had subjugated large parts of Europe, so any "Celtic" crosses in Romania are guaranteed to be unrelated to a possible pre-Roman presence of Celtic tribes. (And it's not like putting a cross in a circle is a terribly original idea, so they probably came up with it independently from the Celtic Christians in Ireland.)
They controlled the eastern portion of Scotland while the Irish-related Gaels controlled the western portion. As the Anglo-Saxons came in, followed by the Vikings, there was a lot of mixing resulting in modern Scottish populations.