As part of their GCSE course, Year 10 geographers attended the annual trip to Margam Park in Wales to complete their human and physical investigations, which are examined on in their final paper.

On Thursday morning we set off from Senior Boys and headed straight to Cardiff Bay where we met our tutors from the Field Studies Council. The pupils walked through a blustery Cardiff Bay, discussing regeneration and land use. When we arrived at Mermaid's Quay, the group completed a land use mapping and tally task to see how public space is used and asked members of the public about their opinions of the area.

After an afternoon of fieldwork, we headed on the bus to the Field Studies Centre at Margam Park. The girls and boys had a follow up session where they went over their keywords, discussed the three different types of sampling strategies and the differences between quantitative and qualitative data, and went through the progress of enquiry.

Friday was a wet and windy day; however, everyone persevered on. The pupils visited different sites of the River Ogmore to look at how the characteristics of the river changed along its course. In an evening session we went through the key features of a drainage basin, identified river features on an OS map, thought about what geographical questions we could ask about the river and what factors affect the river. Finally we looked at some background information about the river like the shape, impact of urbanisation and catchment area, before completing a risk assessment of potential risks and a field sketch.

Saturday was drier and we were able to get to the river next to the centre. Pupils practiced how to measure velocity, width and depth of the channel and sediment size and shape. After a busy and educational few days, we then boarded the bus to take us back to Maidenhead.