Saturday was spent walking from Start Point to Slapton Ley, which noting the differences along the coastline. The objectives for the day were to understand how the coastal environment operates as a system, finding out the origins and development of coastal landforms and assessing how effective coastal management is in changing the coastal system. Some of the fieldwork techniques which were carried out to do this included a bi-polar of the sea defences (their positives and negatives), a cost-benefit analysis (how expensive different types of coastal management are) and completed a small case study at South Hallsands looking at sustainability, storms and sediment cells.

On Sunday the students travelled from Slapton Ley to Plymouth to examine the socio-economic characteristics of the settlement. The aim was to look at the inequalities in Plymouth and look at how they can been managed. The students studied the settlement and compared it to the cycle of poverty to see if Plymouth fit the model and analysed data focusing on the education, unemployment, benefits, index of deprivation for the living environment and crime data. They also conducted observations about the public on their behaviour and appearance, carried out an emotions survey to reflect how they felt in different parts of a large urban place and what sorts of groups of people they saw as they walked around.

Monday was split into two, the morning was spent with students at the Mattiscombe coastline where they focused on how landforms were formed and how they changed over time (there was even some seal watching!) Just like at Start Point, the students looked at how to protect the beach and how effective different types of coastal management were. Finally, in the afternoon we returned to Slapton Ley. The students spent some time in the village looking at the characteristics of the settlement and what sort of people they thought lived and used the village.

Miss Clifford
Head of Geography

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