UKC

The nights getting longer thread got me thinking about places in the UK where in the darkest days of winter the sun doesn't shine. I'm talking about inhabited towns, villages and houses rather than high up a Ben Nevis gully. (I once spent a night in Middlesbrough and I swear the room got darker when I opened the curtains... but that's another matter...)

I'm pretty sure parts of Stonethwaite in Borrowdale don't see the sun for a considerable period in December given the frost often stays intact for days at a time whereas in nearby Seatoller the frost melts.

Are there any sizable places without sun?

I always assumed that when people told you to stick it where the sun don't shine they meant Kinlochleven.

Shitterton, in Dorset, is the obvious one... Or Crapstone, in Devon.

... Both of which feature in a great Stewart Lee routine, at around 17 minutes in on this clip:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03xhjxh

Can't think of anywhere sizeable but I don't think Letters on the west side of Loch Broom is going to see much of the sun towards the end of the year and into Jan and Feb.

Dave

Nant Peris but not sizeable

My first thought too. 

Yeah we lived in a terrace in Nant Peris, we'd lose the sun October/November and could see it on the hillside but it wouldn't directly hit the garden until sometime in late February. Some days you could have a good temperature drop between there and llanberis itself.

It’s very dark in the shittlehope burn.

This place in Italy used to be dark - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6189371.stm

Over a decade ago, staying at Ariundle over Christmas, I dropped my wife off at the foot of the West ridge of Beinn Mheadhoid so that she could traverse over it and Sgurr Dhomhnuill then back to Ariandle while our baby daughter and I entertained each other.

On the way back down the glen I got chatting to the postie for the area, who lived in Glenhurich itself - she had moved up there because her partner had really fancied the idea of basic living in the Highlands - but it had turned out that he wasn't really suited to it, and he had moved back south and she had stayed.

Anyway, she didn't see much sunlight at home - between the steep sides and the thick forestry, Glen Hurich is perhaps the gloomiest glen I know of in Scotland.

https://www.bing.com/maps?osid=46ddba90-d13b-4d5e-8909-6330fa2d0a5d&cp=...

My back lawn, north facing, will lose all sun in about 2 weeks and will see direct sunlight again in early March.

I've never quite understood the desire to live on a heavily forested north facing slope. There seem to be a fair number in various Perthshire glens and even some in the Lakes. Even less desirable when they have no views except the trees. Each to their own.