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Last week the LVI (Year 12) A Level Geography students went on a Geography field trip to Dorset and Bristol. They learnt new skills, as well as developing their existing ones, and thankfully the weather was on their side!
'On the first day, we set off bright and early to the stunning Lulworth Cove. Here, we practised some field sketching and discussed local landforms and their formation. It was so useful to see one of our named coastal case studies in real life, and not just on the page. We then moved down onto the beach and generated some cliff profiles using clinometers and followed up with some cliff degradation surveys. The final study in this region was an assessment of how people’s mood is influenced by local factors such as traffic and density of pedestrians. We had a really good lunch on the coastline with some amazing views, after some hard work on the beach. After this, we drove to the PGL Centre at Osmington Bay. Once we had dropped off our bags, we were straight off to the National Sailing Centre at the Olympic site in Weymouth, where the 2012 Olympic water sports took place. We split into two groups to go keel sailing and it was amazing to see some dolphins leaping around us while we were learning the basics of sailing!
On Tuesday, we had a full-on day of Physical Geography in Lyme Regis, Bridport, and West Bay. Here we created beach profiles, calculated sediment build-up around groynes and measured the rate of longshore drift. These data collection techniques built up our skills to eventually create our own NEAs. Additionally, we also discussed the effectiveness of the artificial sea defences in certain areas, such as recurved sea walls, rip rap and groynes; this was backed up by data we collected that day. We had some classroom time that evening to consolidate our knowledge and prepare us for the next day. We had our final night at PGL and we were excited to set off to a new location.
On the third day, we had our final morning of working with PGL. We focused more on Human Geography skills with pedestrian counts and environmental quality assessments as part of our data collection in Weymouth. This pretty seaside town had lots of geographical areas to explore and analyse. Before departing we visited the café by the Isle of Portland Prison, there were some incredible views of Chesil Beach and the aforementioned sailing area in Weymouth. We then drove to Sandbanks. This is one of our Human Geography case studies, so it was great to see it for ourselves, to allow extended knowledge of our course. We arrived quite late at our Sandbanks Hotel, and it was nice to have a quick lesson right by the beach before swimming in the pool and having a good night’s sleep in the hotel.
On the Thursday, we were excited to have a paddleboarding tour of the coast, which was so much fun. This was a really nice way to view the area, before cracking on with our case study analysis. After this, we had a lesson on the beach which set out our tasks for the day. This was an independent group study which focused on real estate. Sandbanks has some of the most expensive real estate per m² in the entire world. We carried out building quality surveys around these areas to see if there was a variation in a small area. This was so interesting to see the difference in prices and architecture and to see how much location influenced prices. We also conducted a geolocation of a sample of houses for later analysis using our school’s GIS platform. Following this, we had more of an idea whether we wanted to focus our NEAs on Human or Physical Geography after getting some data for each type. After this data collection we drove to our final destination, Bristol.
We stayed in Filton which meant it was only a short drive to our three desired locations: Cabot Circus, Cribbs Causeway and Wapping Wharf. Again, we focused on Human Geography with a new area of data collection. In these places we carried out questionnaires with the public; these were based on the perception of the quality of life in the area. Additionally, we carried out an EQA and a field sketch in each place. This allowed opinions from the public to be displayed in our own data. The combination of these data collections displayed an overview of the areas. This meant that we could analyse this data, finding trends and common opinions. We used our own navigational skills to walk from place to place which meant we were always focusing on Geography! We departed Bristol at around 2pm, tired but also feeling very productive after such a busy week, filled with so much information and different aspects of Geography.'
Nancy (LVI)