Geography expedition.
Mr Chappory, Head of Geography, reports on the recent A Level Geography field visit to Aberystwyth where the weather and our Geographers were at their best:
‘From Sunday 7th to Thursday 11th July, our five intrepid A level Geographers, Mrs Pugh, Miss Keep and myself, stayed at Aberystwyth University in Ceredigion, Wales to study this amazing coastal landscape and the way that it is managed by people. We covered every beach, cliff, cave, estuary, spit and sand dune between Aberystwyth Harbour and the Ynyslas SSSI.
This year for the first time ever, the mysterious Sarnau (glacial deposits) which ancients believed to be causeways to the underwater homes of gods, were visible at low tide.
Everything measureable was measured, from height and frequency of waves, to gradients of rock strata, height of sea walls, length of groynes, profiles of beaches, land-use on seafronts and the near impossible transect through the sand dunes.
Also, over 1,000 photos were taken as qualitative data is often more valuable for fieldwork than quantitative data, supporting the contention that “not all that counts can be counted, and not all that can be counted counts”.
However, we had fun too! We even took a minute to watch one of Aber’s trademark sunsets!’
