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Year 8 River Fieldwork at Carding Mill Valley
13 June 2025
In early June, Year 8 visited the beautiful Carding Mill Valley for some rivers fieldwork. Despite a drizzly start, the weather soon cleared and the girls, all donned in wellies, spent the day investigating how the Ashbrooke river changes downstream. There was plenty of hands-on learning and fun too, from splashing around in the water to running away from a few sheep, all set against the stunning Shropshire landscape.
During lunch, Mrs Egan, Geography teacher, also had a chance to speak with Sian Lovegrove from the Strettons Podcast, who featured the visit in the June 10 episode now available on the website or Spotify (Carding Mill Valley segment begins at 14:45; Mrs Egan’s appears at 16:30).
For a full account of the day, here’s a fantastic student report by Yunxin and Humaira in 8M:
Last Wednesday, Year 8 went to Carding Valley, Shropshire, in Church Stretton, which is preserved by the National Trust, to find out the answer to the question “How does the Ashbrooke river change downstream?”
After a long journey of one and a half hours on the coach, we arrived, stunned by the beautiful valleys, alongside with flocks of sheep. Whilst there, we planned to measure the width, depth, speed, gradient, and the bedload size of the river to see if they increase or decrease downstream. We were given a variety of equipment, including rulers, corks, ranging poles, and measuring tapes. Then, we were split into groups of four to five people.
Our first site was the middle part of the river, where we measured the depth every 25 cm along the river, using our measuring tape and ruler in the water. To find the width of the river, we put two ranging poles on either side of the river edge, and using a measuring tape, we found out the width of the river. To find the river speed, we set up two ranging poles on both ends of the river at 3m apart, then we stepped into the water with our wellies and put a cork into the river at our first ranging pole. With a stopwatch, we timed how long the cork took to reach the other ranging pole. To find out the gradient, we used a clinometer to record how steep the river is. Finally, we picked up ten different rocks from our site, ranging from tiny to large, and measured the longest edge with our ruler. We then gave it a score from the rock index, to measure how rounded the rock was. We repeated this all again for the lower site.
After we were finished, we went to sit on the grass and have some lunch, just after it finished raining! There were lots of sheep accompanying us, including one particular sheep that even ate our food!
After lunch, we measured the upper site of the river, repeating the same process we did with the middle site and the lower site. We then finished all the activities, returned the equipment and even had time to go to the café, to get some food, including ice cream!
We all returned to school and had a great day at Carding Mill Valley!
Thank you to the staff for planning the trip!
Year 8 River Fieldwork at Carding Mill Valley
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