Unravel the Mysteries of River Velocity: Year 10 Geography Field Trip to Exmoor Reveals the Secrets!
Senior School
Year 10 GCSE geography trip – “Into the Wild”
In a fearless and impassioned quest for the truth, our year 10 geographers ventured into the wilds of Exmoor, determined to uncover the holy grail of river secrets by unearthing out what factors influenced its velocity. Enduring such sacrifices as being without phone signal for several hours, our elite team of students poked, prodded and provoked the River Holford from every imaginable angle until at last it succumbed to reveal its innermost behaviour. We eventually found out that the Holford’s velocity did increase significantly as it flowed downstream, much to everyone’s shock and surprise. After all, the slopes become much less steep as we went downstream, so this seemed to confound all logic. After several more hours of problem solving and number crunching the students think they might have cracked this riddle. I cannot reveal the answer to you, as you would have to take GCSE geography to be privy to that kind of information, but suffice it to say that the hydraulic radius seemed to be at play.
This valiant endeavour was all part of the year 10 GCSE fieldtrip. The sun kindly shone down on us for two whole days of intensive data collection and ice cream consumption. We stayed overnight in the lovely Beach hotel in Minehead, with wonderous panoramic views of the extensive sandy beach. After a hearty meal of home cooked lasagne followed by a large warm chocolate cake, the classes ventured to the beach for a highly competitive game of rounders. This certainly revealed that one of the classes was more book-smart than sports-smart. On return to the hotel the students set up their own movie night.
The next day, after a glorious sunrise over the sea and a full cooked breakfast buffet, the students spent the day studying the coastal management in Minehead. The council has spent over £13 million on massive ramparts to try to keep the sea at bay here to protect the town. The highlight of this was interrogating the unsuspecting shoppers in the high street what they thought about the sea defences. The students worked hard and collected all the data they needed for their GCSE course. It was great, after all the covid years, to be back out in the field and collecting data like the good old days!
(Mr Heath)
