ALMOST 5m southerners have never travelled north of the Watford Gap - and the cultural barrier has become an equal deterrent in the opposite direction.

According to a survey published today, 2.3m northerners have never ventured south, whether to London, the white cliffs of Dover or a Cornish beach.

The findings suggest that rather than unify the country, the boom in cheap air travel has reinforced a historic rift as British holidaymakers head overseas rather than explore their own country.

Just one in five southerners has visited Liverpool, the 2008 European Capital of Culture and birthplace of the Beatles. When northerners venture south their destination tends to be London. Only one in five has been to Bath, while a mere 15% have visited Brighton.

The cultural divide has led to three in four English people resorting to comic stereotypes to understand their fellow countrymen, often relying on the television soap operas EastEnders and Coronation Street.

Almost three-fifths of northerners describe southerners as snobs while half surveyed associated London and the home counties with “wide boys” and City brokers in “pinstripe suits”.

For southerners, the north isa desolate landscape of derelict mining villages and fish and chip shops, and is dismissed by three-fifths as “bleak” and “unsophisticated”.

The actor Nigel Havers, 58, whose roles have included a succession of smooth southern charmers, including the eponymous hero of the television series, The Charmer, lives in South Kensington, a fashionable area of London. He argued, however, that the southern perception of the north, where he has spent years touring regional theatres, could not be more wrong.

“I love being up north. I am beginning to think London has lost its shine . . . I would rather live in Manchester, Edinburgh or Birmingham.”

Simon Rimmer, 44, runs one of the finest restaurants outside London, Greens in Manchester. “Parts of the north are much more prosperous than they were 20 years ago and now we look to Barcelona and Milan rather than London,” he said. “We have a great culture – restaurants, theatre, music - and so the north does not need the south.”

Boris Johnson, the London mayoral candidate and Conservative MP for Henley-on-Thames, was famously forced to apologise to the entire city of Liverpool after accusing it of wallowing in victimhood.

“Many families simply cannot afford to travel up and down the country. Travel around and out of the capital has become prohibitively expensive,” he said.

Guy Parsons, chief executive of the Travelodge hotel group, which conducted the survey of 2,000 adults, added: “This survey shows a worrying trend towards parochialism.”

However, while many head overseas for their holidays, the domestic market remains vital to the UK’s tourism industry.

“Eighty per cent of our £85 billion industry is generated by domestic tourism,” said Tom Wright, chief executive of VisitBritain, the national tourism agency.

Richard Sharpley, professor of tourism at the University of Central Lancashire, said: “These distinctions [between north and south], whether factual or percep-tual, do exist. [But] they should be celebrated by Brits and I would urge people to travel further afield in the UK to enjoy them.”

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