ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Centre points of the United Kingdom

Imagine you live in a house with four other people, and you all want to play a game. You need to find a place that is fair and equal for everyone in the house to meet up. This is kind of like how the United Kingdom (which is like a big house with lots of people) needs to find a fair and equal place for people to come together.

There are a few different ways people have tried to figure out where the very middle of the United Kingdom is, but one way is to use a device called a GPS. This device helps us figure out where we are and how to get to different places.

The GPS can tell us where the middle of the UK is by finding the exact spot that is an equal distance away from the farthest points in each of the four countries that make up the UK: England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. It's kind of like finding the middle of a pie by measuring the distance from each edge to the center.

The exact point that the GPS found is in a town called Meriden, which is in the West Midlands region of England. This means that if you were to draw a line from this point to the edges of each country, the lines would all be the same length.

So, in summary, people wanted to find a fair and equal place for the United Kingdom to come together, and they used a device called a GPS to find the point that is an equal distance from the farthest points in each of the four countries. This point is in a town called Meriden in England.