At the start of October, our Year 11 Geology students embarked on an exciting trip to Dorset. Here’s a firsthand account from the boys, capturing their experiences and discoveries during this memorable adventure.

Day 1 Kimmeridge

Callum
“On the first day of the trip to Kimmeridge we made it to the etches collection museum in the small town that shares the same name in good time. We talked to Nick who volunteers for the museum who gave us a detailed brief on the geological surroundings of the cove and the stretch of the Jurassic Coast that we were situated upon.

After the talk, we went into the main part of the museum, where we saw the amazing and awe-inspiring collection of fossils. The locally shot documentary with Sir David Attenborough had its star situated upon a raised pedestal in the center, a 2 M-long pliosaur skull found high in the eroding cliff face and painstakingly reassembled here in the museum itself. There were multiple other impressive fossils there too giving us a view into the prehistoric origins of the grounds we so step on. Overall, my favorite part of the trip had to have been when we saw all of the amazing fossils in the Etches collection.”

Euan
“The museum was captivating and an insight into our Earth’s past. Later that day we took a trip down to Kimmeridge Bay which was my favorite part of the trip where many of us found fossils of ammonites and other ancient sea creatures that lived in the Jurassic.”

Day 2 Chesil beach

Zach
“When we arrived at the beach early on Thursday morning after a 7:00 wake up, we started our first location at Portland, which was the furthest point east. After a safety chat, we started by measuring different sizes of pebbles using calipers and then tried to identify which type of rock the pebble was made from and recorded the data in our booklets. After this we measured how long it took for an apple to drift across the beach so we can measure the longshore drift speed and direction. Then we counted how many waves hit the beach in one minute. This would help us to determine from where the sediment was traveling too.”

George
“On day 2 of the trip, we stopped at three different points of Chesil Beach, to investigate the effects of longshore drift on the beach and identify Geology played a role in the beach’s formation. We started at Portland in the East and traveled westwards towards Lyme Regis, stopping off at Abbotsbury and West Bay and finally Lyme Regis along the way. We were able to confirm that sediment was larger the closer away from the source. Afterwards we spent the afternoon in Lyme Regis, which was my favourite part of the trip.”

Day 3 Lulworth Cove

Nathan
“This was the favorite bit of the trip for me, the cove was pretty and I enjoyed a hot chocolate! At Lulworth cove we looked at the crumple and did a field sketch of it to label the geological features of how the crumple got its shape. When we got down to the beach at Lulworth Cove, we discussed the rock type and how it was formed from Chalk and how this took several million years to achieve. Wedid not survey the cove because it was unsafe due to landslides and the rock collapsing.”