Our Year 10 pupils visit the Cranedale Centre in North Yorkshire
A report below by Year 10 pupil Oliver.
On Friday 3 May, the Year 10 pupils departed for Yorkshire in the early hours of the morning on the coach journey to the Cranedale Centre, North Yorkshire.
Upon arrival, we were introduced to our tutors for the weekend and then left the Centre to carry out a pilot investigation of the nearby urban settlement of Malton (also known as “Yorkshire’s food capital”). This investigation consisted of us visiting several different areas of the town and describing the surrounding environment as best we could.
We then returned to the Centre and spent the rest of the day analysing our data and planning for the following day with our tutors, taking a break for dinner which was highly rated by the teachers and for good reason. Another popular part of the Centre was the common room containing a flat-screen TV, table tennis and football tables and a hot drinks machine.
The next day, we returned to Malton to carry out a more in depth investigation of the urban area, trying to see if it obeys a specific hypothesis and observing the environmental quality of the town in several different areas.
From Sunday, we changed to studying coastal environments. To do so we visited three different points on the Holderness coast in East Yorkshire which is the most eroding coastline in all of Europe, at around 2 metres per year in some places. We found out that this is because the rock which the coastline if formed of is called boulder clay and is so soft you can break it up just by rubbing with your hands. We also received an Oxford level lecture from Mr Price about his favourite type of grass (marram) and how useful it was on this coastline.
On the final day we visited Flamborough Head, a major divider of the UK’s coasts and a headland stretching 8 miles out of the regular coastline. There we drew field sketches of the landforms and visited several caves and arches to see the different ways the sea is eroding the rock. From Flamborough Head, the Year 10 pupils returned to School having covered 23% of the material for the IGCSE exam in just one weekend.
