Year 11 Geography Residential Field Trip: South Wales

It was a wet but wonderful weekend for our Year 11 Geographers who recently ventured to South Wales for a residential field trip in support of their iGCSE summer exams. With local experts from The Field Studies Council, the Department studied river and urban environments, first-hand.

Head of Geography, Oliver Staines, exclaimed “I told the students (and anyone who would listen really) that it was by far the wettest field trip I had led in almost 20 years of doing so and it turns out this may not have been off the cuff hyperbole, because this March was just confirmed as the wettest since 1981, when I was definitely not involved in running field trips, having yet to be born!”

“On day one the cohort mapped land use changes along a transect line though Cardiff and completed environmental quality and bipolar surveys. “Despite the very wet weather on the Thursday, the students really enjoyed their experience collecting data along a transect from Cardiff Centre to Cardiff Bay, even getting a surprising number of people to stop and answer questionnaires – a rite of passage for all true Geographers!” commented Oliver.

“On Friday we toured the length of the Ogmore River, taking what samples we could and sketching the changing landscape of each section, but the combination of snowmelt and rainfall meant the channel was flowing just a little too fast for us to enter. Instead, we practiced the techniques they needed to be able to talk about in the exam in a smaller river near to The Margam Park Discovery Centre where we were staying.”

Chosen on account of its excellent reputation, superb location and top-class facilities, The Margam Park Discovery Centre proved the perfect location for processing results in the evenings. “Each evening we were there and the whole of Saturday morning, gave us excellent opportunities to contextualise our experience and practically go through parts of the Route to Enquiry model they will be tested on in two months’ time.”