A fantastic day out!

Year 10 Geography field trip: Wycoller

Written by Emily B, Erin W, Laura B, Violet S & Olivia D (Year 10)

On Wednesday, 30 June, we took part in one of the seven Geography field trips to Wycoller to observe the river there for our GCSE river studies, putting into practice some of the theory we had studied in our classes.

The drive to the Wycoller park was an eventful one, but once Mr Watters realised we’d gone all the way to Bolton because of a wrong turning, we were finally on our way. After fuelling up for the trip with some snacks and donuts, we drove up to the river and first viewed an example of hard engineering upon the river's middle course. We documented this by taking photographs of the human intervention and evidenced more river features throughout the day. 

We walked in our wellies to our first site which was a stunning waterfall. Mr Watters recapped how waterfalls form and are created and the four main stages. We used our mobile phones to create our own video diaries of waterfall formation for reference at a later date.  A tree nearby showed how high the water level gets to when the river floods. We were surprised!

Just before lunch, Mr Watters modelled how to set up the study and how we accurately measure the characteristics of a river. We used a tape measure to measure the width and then used a ruler to determine the depth. For the velocity, we timed the floating of some sticks along the river and discussed how the accuracy could be improved with a flow meter. We calculated the speed using cross-curricular links to science, where velocity = distance divided by time.  Mr Watters and Mr Metcalfe were both very strict in ensuring that the methods were set up with military precision!

We had lunch in a meadow with some lovely ducks and their ducklings, whilst trying to protect ourselves from a midge attack before walking down to the final two sites of the river where we had the opportunity to carry out the testing by ourselves in our group. Here we studied a meander and how the river erodes on the outer bend and deposits bedload on the inner slip-off slope. We also had some volunteers who jumped into the river to represent the movement of rocks in the water – the boys made a large noise in the process!

We then finished the day with an ice lolly on the way back from Wycoller to cool down on what was a lovely summer's day. Overall we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and learnt new things whilst having fun and bringing our theory to life!

Emily B, Erin W, Laura B, Violet S & Olivia D