Year 8 students enjoyed an action‑packed residential trip to Portland, combining outdoor adventures with hands‑on scientific learning by the coast.
On Wednesday 25th March, 47 students from Year 8, headed off to Portland. We were excited to be going but also a little nervous. The coach trip took around two hours, and we arrived to bright sunshine and the sea.
The staff from outdoor centre met us and quickly helped us to unload the bus into the field centre. We were given a briefing, took our bags to our rooms and then had our lunch. We then split into two groups, Dr. Saunders group were going to do some Coastal bushcraft and Mr Hooper’s group water sports.
The first challenge for the water sport group was to change into our wetsuits, which was a new experience for some people. Once we were kitted out, we walked over the harbour. We built a raft and then tested it out to ensure it would float and we also had fun on a large stand-up paddle board. It was lots of fun and many of us got really wet. We were also lucky enough to see a dolphin in the harbour.
The coastal bushcraft group found out this meant that we first had fillet and gut our mackerel. Some of us loved learning this new skill, whilst others did not enjoy this part. We then walked to the beach where we learn about the formation of Chesil Beach, the key words being long-shore drift, we also looked at the pebbles and discuss how they formed. We learnt or practice how to make fire with flint and steel and with sunlight. Whilst we were busy doing all this, our mackerel was cooked over a fire on the beach, we then add our mackerel and many of us agreed these were tasty.
It was back to the field centre, where we had a fire drill and made our beds (this was a new skill for some of us) before dinner. After dinner it was a rather cold walk to Chesil Beach where we looked at the stars and remembered what we had learnt in the astrodome earlier in the year.
Thursday started at 7am, Dr. Saunders banged on our doors to ensure we were all awake and getting ready for breakfast. It was a full cooked breakfast that set us up for the day. Today was a long day of sampling with the Quadrats. We sampled at three different locations, the quarry, which was sheltered and had lots of soil, the beach which was windy and had little soil and finally a rocky outcrop, with some soil and semi-sheltered. We were investigating if the number of species changed between these three locations.
We also went Coasteering at Portland Bill, we were shore about putting on the cold wetsuits as we changed but we had a brilliant time, exploring the limestone ledges and jumping in and out of the sea and came back with the largest smiles on our faces. The screams of laughter and fun could be heard from the top of the cliffs. Those in the afternoon group also got to see a seal sunbathing on the rocks.
In the evening, we looked at the quadrat data we had collected in the day. We looked at the range of data collected across the class. We found on overage that the quarry had five different species, the beach, two and the rocky outcrop, three. We plotted a graph to show our results and discussed why the quarry would have more species. We concluded it was because it was more sheltered and had more soil that could support the greater range of species.
At this point, it was already late, some of us were still having showers, we had to pack to be ready for the morning and some of us just wanted to sleep and went to bed.
Friday started with our wake-up call around 7am, we stripped our beds (another new skill for some of us), tidy our dorms and made sure we were ready for the day. We then had breakfast, another full English and were ready to do the final activity either coastal bushcraft or water sports.
At the end of the activities we had just enough time for lunch before returning to Sholing. Overall we had a fun, but tiring couple of days. It was great to try some new activities and to do some science in the outdoor laboratory.
Thank you to Portland Outdoors and all the Sholing staff who made this opportunity possible.