Year 4 learnt all about rivers last term, but today they had the chance to take a journey down the River Lune, from its source at Newbiggin-on-Lune in Cumbria all the way down to the estuary beyond Glasson Dock. We started off at St. Helen's Well where we were surprised to find very little water springing from it today! We then moved on to stop at a number of places downstream including Lune's Bridge (a disused bridge over a steep gorge near Tebay) and Devil's Bridge at Kirkby Lonsdale. We practised our field-sketching skills and used lots of the vocabulary we learnt in class, such as tributary, confluence, erosion and valley. At Caton, we went to explore the enormous meander on the floodplain. Whilst we were there, we looked at the flood levels marked on the stone supports of the aqueduct and were amazed by how high the flood waters had reached in the past. The highest by far was December 2015 in Storm Desmond (when Year 4 were just toddlers).
At our second stop, someone accidentally dropped their pencil in the river. We wondered if we might see it further down stream, and how fast it might travel, but we didn't see it again!