To the north, west and south, a flat coastal belt, bordering the Irish Sea, with its inlets Morecambe Bay and Solway Firth, and broadest in the north, marks off the Lake District, while to the east the valleys of the Eden and the Lune divide it from the Pennine mountain system.
On this shore Morecambe Bay receives the Wampool and Waver from the plain, the Ellen has its mouth at Maryport, and the Derwent from the Lake District at Workington.
Through its connexion with Morecambe Bay by a ship canal of I m.
The chief localities of natural scalps on the British coast are Morecambe Bay in Lancashire and the flat eastern shores, especially that of the Wash of Lincoln, and similar shallow bays.
The chief paths of depressions are from southwest to north-east across England; one track runs across the south-east and eastern counties, and is that followed by a large proportion of the summer and autumn storms, thereby perhaps helping to explain the peculiar liability of the east of England to damage from hail accompanying thunderstorms. A second track crosses central England, entering by the Severn estuary and leaving by the Humber or the Wash; while a third crosses the north of England from the neighbourhood of Morecambe Bay to the Tyne.
