Lake District Explorations

The Year 12 Geography group travelled to the Lake District this week to experience their Glaciation case study in reality and to learn, practise and revise techniques for their A level Geography coursework component. At approximately a 780km round trip, the journey was long and tiring, but what awaited us was well worth the adventure.

Glaciation Day - Easedale Tarn

Our first proper day was by far the best as we had the opportunity to visualise what we have been learning about in class. Our three mile walk from the village of Grasmere up to Easedale tarn involved seeing a roche moutonnée, striations, hanging valleys, moraines, a corrie and even one of Wordsworth's houses! Luckily we left the rain behind in Portsmouth and had clear skies for most of the day, which allowed us to properly appreciate the scenic landscape and picturesque views. The day ended with a trip to the famous gingerbread shop, followed by a very useful GIS and data presentation workshop after dinner. 

Keswick Day - Changing Places Making Spaces

Although the weather wasn’t quite as pleasant, we headed off to Keswick on day two where we collected a large variety of data to back up our hypothesis that the Lake District is the “Adventure Capital UK”. Lunch at the local Keswickian chippy was thoroughly enjoyed by everyone (especially the pigeons). We concluded the day with a quiz which summarised all of our learning from the door codes to the main building to the height of the tallest peak in the Lake District. Congratulations to the Borrowdale Bros (Piers, Ollie and Charlie) for winning- although we suspect there might have been some cheating… 

Earth’s Life Support Systems - Morning 

The third morning was by far the most miserable due to high winds and torrential rain. However, this didn’t stop us and we learnt and revised some valuable water and carbon cycle data collection methods, techniques and evaluation points which will be really useful for our coursework. 

Conclusion

Despite the tunes of Miss Stewart’s Pink playlist ringing permanently in our ears, the trip was thoroughly enjoyable and everyone involved had a good time. We would like to give special thanks to Mrs Knott for giving up her mother’s day to come and join us on our adventure, and of course we’d like to thank Miss Stewart. Despite her… questionable taste in music, the trip wouldn’t have been the same without her.