Thursday 31 January 2008

Wales...

A few of you have been asking about the Wales trip... There will be lots more information coming soon but in the meantime...

We will be leaving school on Monday 29th September and returning on Friday 3rd October, and we will be staying at Beechwood Court, which is just outside the town of Conwy.

The main purpose of the trip is for you to develop some of the skills that you will need for your coursework project, to give you some ideas about what you might want to do for your coursework project, and for me to remind myself how to use an OHP! It is highly likely that some of what we do will be different this year, but the itinerary in the past has been something like this:

Monday
Leave Swanwick at 9am. Arrive at Beechwood Court at about 2pm and allocate rooms, etc. Head to Conwy Morfa to examine the beach profile, longshore drift, and sorting along the spit. Dinner at 6ish, and then work/planning/preparation from 7.30-9.30ish.

Tuesday
Breakfast at 8ish. Walk up Conwy Mountain to look at the view, do some field sketching, etc.. Set off to Llandudno at 11am - working as a group in the morning to delimit the CBD, and then some smaller investigations in the afternoon, looking at accessibility, streetscapes, land-use, etc. Dinner and work!

Wednesday
Breakfast. Off to Snowdonia... Llyn Ogwen, Nant-Ffrancon, Cwm Idwal... looking at glaciation. Dinner and work! Looking at some past A level projects and planning a "pilot study".

Thursday
Breakfast. Off in small groups to various different places to carry out "pilot studies" - river studies, land use in Llandudno, traffic and transport in Conwy, saltmarsh study, accessibility, environmental impact assessments, and of course, the infamous scree slopes! Dinner and work.

Friday
Pack, load minibus, breakfast. Comparison of Trefriw and Betws-y-Coed as tourist destinations. Return to Swanwick by 4pm.

Check out the photos on Share from the past few years!!

5 comments:

Anna Simpson said...

Would you recommend everyone to take a camera?
What about binoculars? or won't there be any time for birding?

Miss Ellis said...

Yes, you definitely should take a camera... As for birdwatching, I can't say whether there'll be time... I'd be quite interested to do something saltmarsh-related near Conwy (where there is an RSPB reserve) but we haven't yet planned what we'll be doing in any great detail...

Anna Simpson said...

Do you know what the RSPB reserve is called?

Miss Ellis said...

I think, from the map I've just looked at, that it is Conwy Nature Reserve.

Anna Simpson said...

There's some great birds around that part of the coast. Even if we don't get to go to the nature reserve, it doesn't matter, there's other really good wildlife habitats around there anyway . My binoculars will most likely be coming on the trip then. I don't think i could survive the trip without them, i'd be lost, they'll be attached to me everywhere we go. Mind you i probably won't concentrate well if i have them though that's the problem. What do you think?