Roadtrip!

Wednesday 22nd September 2021

A two day field trip - we missed out on it last year because of Covid so we are joining the Year 1's for their trip. We got on the coach and our lecturer shouts out ROADTRIP!! She has obviously missed it! We started by going to Torr Works quarry. You can see from the picture the scale of the works - they have been quarrying here for over 60 years and have another 20 years on the lease. The interesting question was - is this a good or a bad thing for biodiversity. Not as obvious as you might think. The site used to be a monoculture of agricultural land - not much biodiversity. About half of it is quarried the rest has been turned into meadows and trees/scrub linking to an SSSI site nearby. They are building butterfly habitats. When the quarrying is finished it will turn into a water park like the Cotswold water park - a much smaller area but the concept is the same. Really interesting that what looks like something that is bad for biodiversity might actually be much better than what was there before.

We visited a couple of other sited then off to the Youth Hostel in Cheddar. Bangers and mash for tea, a quick walk to the pub and then off to bed. The rooms and facilities are much better than the youth hostels that I remember!!