Suppose someone wanted to visit the UK or Ireland, but did not want to see any cities or suburban sprawl. What would be the most interesting and desolate places to go?
(I’m not talking about extended UK territories like the Falklands.)
The Highlands of Scotland, Inner and Outer Hebrides, Orkney and Shetland for starters.
Mainland only, or are islands included? If so, perhaps the Shetland Islands. The northwest highlands of Scotland also have some pretty remote, inaccessible areas. I believe north Wales is also pretty sparsely populated.
England would be trickier because of the higher population density, but the North Yorkshire moors might fit.
The Burren would have to be up there. You can be there and not see anything else really. I’m not sure how far from other people you would be though.
The centre of Donegal is the least populated, most desolate and windswept place I’ve been in Europe let alone Ireland. And it goes on for hours. In England try Dartmoor or Exmoor, though you are likely to see tourists on both (and the Burren in my experience).
Thanks, interesting suggestions!
I guess the small islands are fairly obvious from the map so I was a bit more curious about desolate places on the mainland.
I wasn’t really expecting to hear about places with no people at all, but more like utterly rural or wild places where there is no trace of big city living. I’ve heard that parts of Cornwall might be like that too
You can get “utterly rural” and “no trace of big city living” within a very few miles of any major city in the UK or Ireland. Where I’m from is just farmland and villages stretching as far as the eye can see, but it’s only 50 miles from the capital: you can be in the centre of London within an hour (traffic depending).
ETA: and you can be in the Wicklow Hills or the Dublin Mountains in just a few minutes’ drive from the centre of Dublin. For places in proximity to major cities, you can’t get wilder than the Sally Gap.
Look on a map of the British Isles. You’ve got a fairly good chance of finding very rural if you stay 30 miles or so away from the blue lines that mark out the motorways.
North of the M62 (between Liverpool and Hull), you can reduce that distance to 10 miles.
The more sprawly bits are in the South East, the West Midlands around Birmingham, the area around the M62 corridor, and east of the A1(M) from Newcastle down to Middlesborough.
Any of the National Parks are utterly rural (they’re the big green areas on Google maps, plus the Lake District). I’d add in the north Pennines, Northumberland coast north of Ashington (castles, cliffs and beaches) and the Norfolk coast. For Scotland: pretty much anywhere away from the urbanised Central belt around Glasgow & Edinburgh.
For surprising desolation, the road between Manchester and Sheffield is a good candidate - a 40 mile drive of which half is through some of the bleakest, most windswept countryside in England. Most of the rest is highly urban.
I’ve never been there but a good candidate would seem to be Knoydart in Scotland.
However, it does have a pub, which makes it my sort of wilderness. (In case it’s not clear from that quote, you can get there by regular ferry.)
It also depends if you’re prepared to go off the beaten track - and how much effort you’re prepared to put into it. Walk away from a road on any of the moors (Bodmin, Dartmoor, Exmoor, Yorkshire etc), and you’ll soon find yourself in uninhabited spaces.
A wonderful walk is to Sandwood Bay in north western Scotland. You drive to Blairmore, park, and then there is a four mile walk to the magnificent beach. I’ve done it several times, and it’s well worth the effort, whatever the weather. There is no road there, no properties, no vehicles - just you.
Cornwall has been mentioned. It’s my heartland and I know some parts of it very well. The aforementioned Bodmin Moor is over 200 square kilometres. Some of it is used for arable farming, so not all of it is accessible, but it’s suitably bleak and windswept.
The Southwest Coastal Path is a wonderful way of visiting part of Britain’s coast. It’s over 600 miles long, from Somerset to Dorset, and long stretches of it go through uninhabited parts. Parts of it are accessible by car, so you can take short excursions from the road to reach the uninhabited parts.
This mapshows UK population density.
You’ll notice that large parts of the UK have fewer than 5 people per hectare - for all that people say we are a crowded island there is an awful lot that is still just fields.
Bear in mind also that large areas have cultivated farmland - Norfolk for example - which doesn’t have a large population, but which I wouldn’t call “desolte” in the same way that The Highlands are.
Cornwall doesn’t have urban sprawl, but does have civilisation… it just tends to be in small villages and hamlets, which can be as charming and chilled out as an empty moor.
That would be the Snake Pass, can be an exciting drive in bad weather. Some islands not mentioned yet, the Scilly Isles off Cornwall.
Or the Yorkshire dales. I have spent a Christmas in this place and had a very good time…
Indeed. And, like Knoydart mentioned above, it still finds room for a pub 
The pass was named after the pub, although the pub has now been renamed the Snake Pass Inn, so the pub is named after the pass that’s named after the pub.
For truly desolate in these islands, you’ll need to find somewhere without a pub :dubious:
I’d agree, that can be a rough old place in the winter. I grew up about a dozen miles from there and my wife even closer, within walking distance in fact.
Here is a nice little Google street view for that road.
The Old Forge is a truly fantastic pub. the food, particularly the seafood, is excellent, and for such a remote location the place was jumping both nights we were there.
I seem to remember an episode of Father Ted in which he & his eejit colleague tried to get away from it all in what looked like The Burren.
They were not successful.
Was that the one where they borrowed the camper van?
“What age do you think I am? Hmmm? Hmm? What age do you think?” 
Rannoch Moor in Scotland is fairly bleak.