Millions of people in the UK have no idea where major cities such as Manchester, Birmingham and even London feature on a map, according to new research.
In a poll, 2,000 British adults were asked to locate major cities on a map of the UK, accordintg to the Metro newspaper.
Concerningly, around 86 per cent had no idea where Edinburgh was and 40 per cent even struggled to pinpoint London, the poll showed.
“If the results are representative it means there is an epidemic of poor geography.
Pretty shocking stuff,” the paper said.
A spokesman for Ordnance Survey, which commissioned the survey as part of National Map Reading Week, taking place in October, said: “Great Britain is relatively small, yet it seems many of us struggle to pinpoint the positions of cities and locations which may not even be that far from where we live…
‘Many people are lacking in both the basic knowledge of where places are in Britain, and the ability to read a traditional map….this could be due to our increasing reliance on technology like Sat-Navs and mobile devices to tell us where we are.”