Hercynian Uplands

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The Hercynian Uplands is a mountain building event 400 million years ago. It covers much of Western and Central Europe from South-West England, through France and Germany to Hungary and also throughout most of Iberia.

It has been formed as the African Plate and the Eurasian Plate converged and as a result the lifted and fractured sediments (such as limestone and chalk) and now form the higher ground whilst the softer clay are lowland areas - so this zone has a lot of variation in height, but the hills are never very high (about 600 m at the most in South-East Europe, and only 300/400 m in the West.)

The major rivers of Europe have cut through the hills, separating them into many individual blocks such as the Eifel in Germany or the Massif Central in France. The landscape has been further complicated by more recent events - particularly by the folding and movements known as the Alpine orogeny, as well as much recent deposition.