Used to operate an aircraft out of fishburn and my flights used to be along the coast heading south or the couple of times i blasted around Whitby for the hour, I used to fly through the esk valley there and along the coast on the way back.
After departure from fishburn, straight onto the radio to Durham Tees anyway for a service but sometimes asked for transit of controlled airspace direct to Stokesley - normally fine, controller plays ball.
However there's one bugger in that radar room who tried several times on separate occasions to get me to go through the overhead at some daft flight level or being deliberately awkward, needles to say the requests were cancelled.
Otherwise Ive found controllers to be fair and helpful where they can be. Countless transits of Brize during training, Doncaster and East Mids are good, even had a transit through Birmingham.
Plenty more exploring to do
Dan