We just got a winter’s worth of snow in 3 days. Hopes for a damp-free basement this spring dashed at the last minute !
I said “often”, not always. In absolute terms, Scotland does get lower temperatures (and certainly lower daytime temperatures, so colder on average) but in typical winter high-pressure scenarios, it’s often the southern and central England weather stations that get the lowest overnight readings. In fact my local weather station, Farnborough, was the coldest of any in the UK last month, recording -11.7C on Tuesday night. (I was cycling home about 1am and can confirm it was pretty chilly!). Here’s the table for that day and the only colder spots were on top of 3,000ft+ mountains in Scotland. Odiham and Farnborough, both within 7 or 8 miles of here, were both near the top of the coldest spots.
Benson, Redhill (now closed) and even Hurn, near Bournemouth, are also often among the coldest places in such conditions - they’re in frost hollows and have sandy soil, so they tend to record lower temperatures than upland locations in the north.