Between 14th and 16th October 2013 twenty-seven AS level Geography students visited the Juniper Hall field centre for their studies into Extreme Weather and Rural Rebranding.

Below is a report from Sabrina Guselli that featured in the @Ashmole Magazine:

On Monday 14^th October, 27 enthusiastic geographers arrived at Ashmole in colourful wellies and waterproofs, all prepared for our busy three day residential stay in Dorking, Surrey. As part of our AS Geography course we are expected to go on a residential trip and ours was to Juniper Hall, Surrey.  Whilst there we are required to investigate the ‘Extreme Weather’ and ‘Rural Rebranding’ unit of our course. Having taken the hour and a half coach journey, we arrived in the centre of Guildford where we completed our first piece of fieldwork on ‘Flood Risk’.  After completing our surveys and recording sheets, we came across a plaque on the local church stating the shocking height of the floodwater in 1968 - which was almost the same height as me!  After a further 20 minutes of travelling, we arrived at our new home for the next few days, Juniper Hall, and sorted out the most important part of the trip - who we would be sharing a room with!

We then had our first classroom sessions taught by experienced Geography teachers from the Field Centre where we learnt about how to predict and take accurate measurements of rivers, in order to assess the flood risk for the River at Abinger Hammer.  We then had dinner and continued our classroom lessons until 8:30; by which time everyone was exhausted!

Our second day consisted of a 6:45 am wake-up and a rigorous meteorological forecast using the Stevenson Screen.  Followed after by a two hour walk through Box Hill Forest to complete ‘Field Sketches’ and a visit to Denbies Vineyard; a former pig farm that had been rebranded into a winery.  We completed our non-participant observation which involved making observations about the visitors and learning about their facilities, such as the 360 degree circular cinema!  Later that evening, Mr Bray and Miss Harrison took us to a nearby bowling alley as a well-deserved break from all our hard work!

On our final day, we tied up the rest of our fieldwork: presenting our findings from Denbies farm, infiltration of different land types and investigating flood management techniques on the River Mole.  Finally, after our three days of geography immersion, we embarked on our journey back to Ashmole.

I would like to take the opportunity to thank all the Geography staff who organised the trip for us and Mr Bray for accompanying us.  The stay at Juniper Hall provided a valuable and engaging insight into outdoor Geography, that we rarely experience in the classroom and allowed us to strongly develop new-found skills in the subject.