Lake District
On the 14th March 33 A level Geography students departed to conduct their geographical investigations in the Lake District.
Upon arrival we headed out for a 6 Km walk up to Easdale Tarn to see for ourselves the glacial and fluvioglacial landforms which we had learnt in the class room. This was a challenge even for A2 Geographers as they had to unpick the landscape and look for evidence of the Loch Lomond Readvance; a period when intensely cold conditions returned briefly after about 12,900 years ago when an ice cap developed in western Scotland, extending from Torridon to Loch Lomond, and small corrie glaciers were carved out again in the high mountains.
The next day we conducted our geographical investigation on the River Eea to see how the characteristics (such as the hydraulic radius and velocity of the river) changed as you went downstream. This meant we went from the source to the mouth at Morecambe Bay, which has the third largest tidal range in the world. Then in the evening we processed the data we collected and evaluated our methodology to see how we could improve it in the future.
After having a day and a half of physical geography we then turned our attention to human geography, much to Mr Bird’s delight! This involved an investigation to contrast a rural and urban settlement, which involved us getting closer to plutonium than we have ever been before as we did a “drive by” past the shipyard currently building the new ‘Astute Class’ nuclear attack submarines. Meanwhile the Year 13s went to the coast to study the change in vegetative communities as a result of succession on exposed coastal sand.
For the final morning we visited the Kirkby Moor to look at a wind farm. It contained 12 wind turbines, each producing 400KW to power around 2700 homes. This was one of the first sites to host a wind farm back in 1993, and there are proposals to upgrade the turbines with more efficient modern technology, but for reasons we weren’t able to get to the bottom of, the latest plan is for the existing turbines to be decommissioned in the next couple of years. This was a great insight into the complex issues surrounding renewable energy. At the same time Year 13s carried out survey on to establish the different ecologies on managed and non-managed moorland.
The evenings consisted of a seminar and then recreational time, which we spent playing football in the sports hall and also venturing out into the forest at night.
Overall this trip was an invaluable experience and it will set us up well for our Geographical Skills exam in the Summer.
By Josef Feiven 12AHA, Jasdeep Bhambra 12AFI and Harvinder Bhambra 12NHA
