Field days battling tides and weather

It's another fieldwork tradition: a day on the beach with the first year students and my colleague Lynda. This always falls in February or March. The weather can be interesting! This year, though, our first concern was not the weather. It was the tides. They would be unusually high. And low water would be at awkward times. And that led to an unusual situation: we would go out on two afternoons, rather than one whole day. Normally, we split the group in two; half the group first go surveying at Gallow’s Point, and after lunch join us on the beach, and the other half does it the other way around.

Not looking good

My task is to get to the beach before the students do, and demarcate nine sections on the sediment cliff they will have to log. So I travel independently.

This year I had kept an eye on the forecast. It looked absolutely awful! Luckily, the first day, which had initially been forecast to be rain, rain and more rain, became a bit drier. So that was good news. Regarding the tides; I knew that the students would reach the beach while water would still be quite high, so I depended on Lynda to do a sizeable introduction, while I would do what I needed doing.

An hour before I would get there, a student who would drive himself sent us a picture of the flooded road. Oh dear! But I would travel up in a big truck that isn't scared of a bit of flooding. But by the time I arrived, you could tell the road had indeed been flooded in places, but no longer was. Good enough for us! And together with that student I waited for the coach to arrive.

The plan worked! By the time we had given all the students the materials they needed, the tide had dropped so much it was physically possible to get onto the beach. And I could go around and create my sections.

Access (or lack thereof) to the beach, looking back 

Some of the crazy sediment 

The students listening to Lynda’s spiel; notice how far out the tide already is 

It was mainly dry and not particularly cold, but there was a rather chilly wind, and if you were out in it, you would get cold sooner or later. But the students were in fine form, and promising logs were created of the nine sections. When we noticed the first group had done them all, though, we got ready to gather everyone for a bit of a spiel at the end. This was not weather to hang around doing nothing! And I left the sections as they were.

Lynda talks to a student while a fossil coral attracts my attention 

The next day I would pick up a student who had reasons to not travel on the coach with the other students. We left a bit after the coach. The coach would get there when the water levels would be even higher than the day before. No point getting there before them. But that did complicate things!

Shortly outside Beaumaris a man was blocking the road. He said there was a flood, and we couldn't go on. I didn't think my car would struggle with that. And he said he had let the coach through! If a coach can go through, surely my rugged big-wheeled pick up truck would be fine? But I think the point was more that I could physically take a detour over narrow windy country roads, and the coach couldn't. So that's why he had made an exception for Lynda and her crew. I would have to go around.

Me and the student then hit the tiny little back roads. And it wasn't long until we hit a logjam! These roads are not made for traffic going in two directions. Normally, you wouldn't get so many cars there it would be a problem. If you encounter another vehicle, someone just reverses into the nearest passing space, and the problem is solved. But get too many cars in a heap and it doesn't work anymore! So it was a bit of a struggle to make it. But in the end we did.

Lynda had to start talking on the part of the beach where there isn't an exposed cliff face, because we couldn't yet get to the next part of the beach. I splashed through; I've practised this, and I was wearing welly boots. Quite a lot of the students were wearing hiking boots. Not a good idea to wade through seawater with those!

Access to the beach: day 2

I could check the state of the first three sections, and then I had to Wait a bit before I could go around the promontory. Then I could check two more sections. Some needed touching up. And then I had to wait several minutes to make it to the last part of the beach. It was not even unpleasant. The sea is quite mesmerising. I was just standing there, looking at the misty hills of of Gwynedd, listening to the lapping waves. Could be much worse!

Second bottleneck; I had to get past that promontory with the flat rock on top

I then checked the last sections and went back. It turned out I had failed to notice one section had completely vanished. Oh dear! I quickly improvised new one. 

Because the weather would be a lot worse than the day before, we had told the students to only log half the sections, and then do a bit of a data exchange. So we were quite fast this time! Which was great. When Lynda did her spiel, it was raining. So we were glad to get away while we were still relatively warm and dry.

Gloomy skies

We got back without traffic hassle, as by now it was getting closer to low tide.

I must say, I quite liked doing it two different days. Both us and the students used to get quite tired in the morning, and then had to do and afternoon session as well. And for me the challenge always was to bring enough water for the entire day. Maybe we will do it on two different days again next year. We'll see! But at least I was glad we had somehow managed to pull this off in spite of the spring tides and the awful weather forecast. And of unexpected travel challenges…