On Sunday afternoon we excitedly arrived at school, ready to begin our journey up to Preston Montford in Shropshire as part of our GSCE Geography fieldwork. The bus journey was quite long but luckily, we were able to stop at a service station along the way to grab lunch and a few snacks. Once we arrived at our accommodation, we were given a briefing about the evening’s schedule and then we headed off to our rooms. We had an evening session in the classrooms before eating a lovely roast dinner and finally heading off to bed.
On Monday, we went to Carding Mill Valley, a heather marshland, to investigate how the Ash Brook River changes downstream. We studied six sites along the river, starting at the lower course. At each site, we measured width, depth, velocity and took site notes. These notes helped us to understand why the river changed as it did and how factors like vegetation, impermeable surfaces, slope gradients and tributaries affected the river’s course.
On the second day we started the human aspect of our fieldwork, investigating transport sustainability and how effective the park and ride scheme was in improving this. We interviewed people in the town of Shrewsbury and we met a range of interesting people who told us their honest opinions about the park and ride scheme. We also conducted vehicle counts at various points in the town. After our data collection we had time to go shopping in the town shopping centre and have a nice lunch out.
After our day out in Shrewsbury, we headed home and luckily this was the only time on our trip when it rained! Over halfway through we stopped at the Welcome Break service station in Oxford and had dinner, everybody was able to find something they liked as there were lots of different choices. We then arrived back at school on time at 8:00pm. We all had an amazing time making lots of fun memories with our friends. Our FSC tutor, Ffion, helped us to learn lots of the content for our third Geography paper.
We are very grateful to Mrs Griffiths, Ms Dudgeon and Mrs Gill for taking us on this trip.
