Copeland is a balance of industry and countryside. The largest town is Whitehaven, a planned 18th century port which serves shipping from across the Irish Sea. Beyond this lies some of the most beautiful scenery in the Lake District, boasting the highest mountain in England, Scafell Pike, and also the deepest lake at Wastwater.
The breathtaking wilderness is tempered by regular smatterings of economically depressed former coal-mining towns such as Cleator Moor, Egremont, Frizington and the remote Millom. The last Cumbrian coal mine to close was here at Haig Colliery in 1986, and the decline of traditional industries has lead to unsurprisingly high levels of unemployment.
Millom, at the south end of the constituency beyond the Black Combe mountain, has also lost its ironworks and news that the BNFL Sellafield plant will close its Magnox reactor in 2012 will do little to encourage confidence. However, after an embarrassing catalogue of leaks over the years as well as a cancer rate far above the national average, this news will hardly displease those locals who have campaigned for years to have the entire plant shut down.