What a great day Year 6 had today! We have been learning about the Lake District in our geography lessons, as well as reading "Spylark" in class and they came together today as we enjoyed a walk up Todd Cragg (AKA Brockbarrow in Danny Rurlander's "Spylark"). The weather was glorious and the views were stunning. We were even treated to an aerobatics display from a couple of Tornado planes as they flew over Windermere (in the story, Tom's dad was a Tornado pilot, so another link!). The walk also gave us chance to practise our map and fieldwork skills. First we followed the route up Todd Cragg on an OS map, then at the viewpoint we used compasses to orientate our maps, which helped us to identify features in the landscape below. Finally we drew field sketches and had a quick snack before walking back to the coach. 

We then had a change of transport as we boarded the ferry from Ambleside (Watertop in the Spylark story), to Wray Castle (AKA Blythe Castle), arriving at Brockhole in time for lunch. After lunch we had a Geography Detectives session, where we learnt about the work of the National Park and in particular Brockhole Visitor Centre. One amazing fact was that almost 20,000,000 people visited the Lake District last year. We discovered how all these visitors have an impact on the environment and how the National Park have to think of solutions to limit this impact. We even managed to come up with some solutions ourselves.

By the time we got back to the coach we were quite tired, and many of us nodded off during the journey home!