During the Ice Age, ice spread across from Norway and covered all of the UK down to a line between Bristol and London. The North Sea was also filled with ice.

The mountains were covered with ice (as the previous pictures suggest), so the ice sheet scraped away at mountain tops as well as gouging out valleys. This is why our mountain tops are smoothed and rounded and do not have sharp peaks like the Alps.

All of the material scraped from the mountains was carried to the plains. When the ice melted at the end of the Ice Age, the material was left and became thick soil.