Parys Mountain is a bit of an inhospitable place! It is very exposed. And if you have a habit of going there on a field trip in February, you might hit some atrocious weather. Last year I ended my blog post about the trip like this: 'It was a bit touch and go (because of the weather) this year, but I think we pulled it off! Let's hope that our next trip will have nicer weather…'
Well! I suppose the title of this blog post already provides a bit of a hint how things when this year. I think I meant the next trip in the series when I wrote that, but I allow myself to relate it to this year’s version of that same trip. The forecast had already revealed that the weather wasn't going to be great! We decided to play it by ear.
We drove up, parked up, and went to the viewing point, where we always start. It was foggy, but the fog wasn't very dense, and we could still see the pit for the most part. And it wasn't very cold, and even the wind wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. We were fine! And when you descend into the pit you are a bit sheltered from the wind. And we only had a little bit of rain. I got through talking about the geology without issues.
By that time it was lunchtime. We decided to go back to our minibus, and have lunch inside it. And we kept an eye on the rain radar.
When we all had more or less eaten our lunches, the rain was hammering on the windscreen. And it looked like it would still rain for another hour! Should we go back? The rest of the trip is only in industrial archaeology, basically. Not really anything we really need to teach the students. This is just bonus!
We asked the students what they preferred. They didn't have to think about that for very long. Go back to campus! And so we did. It was a bit of a pity to miss out on the amazing industrial remains, but I have seen them many times before, and the students were clearly not too bothered. So I would still put this down as a successful trip!
No comments:
Post a Comment