Coven Camp 2006 Day 3
This is what two nights under canvas and two hard days of activity can do to you on a coach trip to Carding Mill Valley in Shropshire!
Spending time differently on the coach using a girl's scarf!
Arrived at Carding Mill and setting up tape measures to create an accurate measurement of river features of tributary of the River Severn and one of its sources of its local environment in the Carding Mill Valley.
This data and sketches at school will be developed in Y6 classrooms later in the year as part of the Geography curriculum.
They established a baseline in teams and had to map and measure this stretch of the tributary
Measuring takes place with all teams involved
Every team was photographed at work
from the whole Y6 cohort of campers
Measuring the flow of the River over a timed
and measured distance using floating balls.
Locals wanting to eat our sandwiches but chased off!
Y6 having lunch in the Carding Mill National Trust Valley
The Carding Mill
Sheep are abundant here
Wool was taken from sheep and this mill (now a block of flats) replaced jobs done in a home with a sheep’s fleece. (See this page of the school website for taking a sheep’s fleece off in Somerset!) was separated into strands of wool which could twisted into a strong strand of fibres which could be used for knotting woolly jumpers or mass produced woven products.
The original cards were literally hard backed cards with metal spikes and you rubbed parts of sheep’s fleece to death to separate a mass of fur into strands you could work with to make into twine.
You could die this twine into various colours and knit it/weave it to make clothes.
The carding mill used water power make big cylinders with spikes on to rotate and to replace the carding done in cottages.
They could turn out twine in amazing quantities. It all happened in the place above and the valley is named after the mill.
A ford crossing at the first part of the valley walk
The mill’s water wheel needed a volume of water pressure. This was done by damming the stream with an earth bank just short of one metre in height. The resulting reservoir was used as a local outdoor swimming pool.
Pictured above are part of Y6 sitting on what is left of the earth bank.
The reservoir is now a tourist car park.
Although there was not much water in the stream on the day of our visit, during the winter it becomes a raging torrent and erodes the valley. The mesh baskets are a failing man made attempt to prevent erosion.
The valley climb soon starts to become more challenging. The right of the picture the stream we are tracking to its source.
The waterfall near the summit.
The summit with amazing views over Shropshire.
In the evening 4 teams tried out the labyrinth.
The rabbit hole entrance above.
Inside the labyrinth
Inside the labyrinth. This pupil holding
the puzzle sheet of clues to find inside.
The other teams were given maps of the site and photographs of objects to identify and place on the map.
Thursday is Archery and wall climbing day.
Apologies for the late posting of Wednesday’s activities, but we arrived back from the day out in Shropshire quite late.
7.50 am
Thursday 28 September 2006
