Annual Lleiniog field day

Field days in early spring are a bit of a gamble! It can be atrocious weather. But you can also be lucky. We have had both during our annual trip on the beach where the students log glacier and proglacial sediments. I've been doing that since 2018…

This year it looked like we would be lucky (unlike the previous time I had done it, in 2024; in 2025 I had missed it for reasons of timetabling). The forecast was ok and even the tide was on our side. And as usual, I was the first one on the beach. I make sure there are specific sections of the cliff demarcated; these are what the students describe. I can just pick whatever I find interesting! As long as the cliff above it looks stable.

In order to get onto the beach you need to squeeze past the stream

Atmospheric light in the morning

Look at those sediments 

When Lynda and the students arrived at quickly became clear that this was quite a switched-on group. Great! They went about it with little guidance. And before we knew it, we were rounding off, and put the students back on the coach they had come in. They would go to Bangor to do surveying, and the goal to bring the students back to us who had done that in the morning. The coach leaving was our cue to rush to Beaumaris and get some lunch. We managed that in good time!

Lynda explains things under a dramatic sky

Little groups of students by the cliff

Lynda is impressed by the sediments

Fossil corals on the beach

The second group is generally struggling a bit as they have already been battered by whatever the weather throws at them in the morning. It seemed that the surveying has taken place with much less shelter from the wind than we had had! But they were still quite on the ball.

By 4pm we were done and could leave the beach. A successful day, I would say! And we will see the same students again the Monday after, for a session in the lab. This was the first time I will be involved in that! Mike, with whom I have started to collaborate, had been re-organising this part of the module (but he had left the sediment logging on the beach the same). I think he's doing interesting stuff with it. I look forward to see how is next step will pan out!