Crete Field Trip : Chora Sfakion
Archive for Ken's Blog
June 24, 2009 at 8:48 am · Filed under Ken's Blog
Late shopping in Chania
The last day of the field class saw the students board their coach in Chora Sfakion at 0930hrs. The early start allowed the group to spend four hours in Chania where it was back to the commercial hustle. At 1500hrs the coach picked everybody up for the half hour drive to the Airport.
Getting through the airport was marred by the check in desk charging a student for excess baggage before Ken and Richard were also stopped and asked for extra money. Alan said an armed policeman was honing in on the heated discussion however the staff eventually said it was OK for the luggage to go through but not before Ken’s had his hand baggage strip searched.
It was not long before the group were in the departure lounge, the really keen ones connected to the free wireless connection completing their blogs and uploading the light hearted end of course videos that they were producing. Ken meanwhile was completing this, his first real Blog whilst moaning at the exorbitant four euro airport price of the coffee he was drinking and from its taste wondering if it was really a coffee cardboard cut out.
Last stage homeward bound
Takeoff was on time, tail winds were strong helping the plane with an early arrival at Gatwick some thirty minutes early. The coach was awaiting and deposited some tired students back at the University campus looking forward to going on their summer break in a few days.
June 22, 2009 at 2:10 pm · Filed under Ken's Blog
The students spent the day catching up on the details of their work plans. This allowed that some returned into the field for data collection and those that had enough for their work sat in groups on the hotel terrace mostly entering it into their group Mini 9’s.
Alan was much in demand for his expertise in their blogs and even more so for help with the maths in Manning’s equation. One group holding the record by asking the same question four times on dealing with the tan in a right angled triangle
The outdoor work continued through the morning with staff and students taking lunch at their tables and Ken the worst blogger of the lot trying to complete his self inflicted task. One foray took place to identify the position where the group photograph could be taken at 1800pm.
Richard had the task of taking the menu choices for the group’s end of field class meal being arranged for the same evening. Only one student failed to order so Richard kindly put them down for the local Sfakion goat stew. This meant that we could ask them how it tasted as during the week nobody had been brave enough to try it after having seen a few less than agile dead goats in the Ilingas gorge.
June 22, 2009 at 6:29 am · Filed under Ken's Blog
The national park of Samaria
The Ferry boat was put to good use with a 1030am start to Agia Romueli the village at the mouth of the Samaria Gorge. The students were to investigate aspects of tourism and the contrast between the original village position in the gorge and the movement to the present position at the mouth of the gorge.
The student groups split and some explored the village as others headed straight up the gorge interviewing any tourists that they managed to waylay. As many of the tourists looked rather tired from their efforts they probably didn’t mind being stopped for a chat. Ken wondered looking at some of the limping maybe wounded whether when they got back home how much of a strain they would put on their own health services.
The students at some time or the other all reached the iron gates indeed one group proceeded quite a way past which prompted a panic and a gallop back down the gorge in time for the last ferry. The ferry now rather crowded deposited everybody back at Chora Sfakion in time for a well deserved evening meal.
June 21, 2009 at 6:00 am · Filed under Ken's Blog
- Ken inspects mouth of the Illingas gorge
Saturday was what Ken would call from his army days a make and mend day. A few of the students looked like they were on the mend from what appeared to have been high jinks the previous evening, probably started by the friendly local eating establishments habit of giving out the local drink of ‘raki’ at bill presentation time.
Ken had taken the opportunity of diving off the beach at the mouth of Illingas gorge. He took some photographs of large boulders that looked like they could have been deposited by previous floods and there were large branches and parts of trees that had been pinned down by rocks and were now lying on the bottom waterlogged.
Ken returned to the hotel and at lunch time met up with Alan and Richard who had done their own separate exploratory sightseeing tours in the local area.
June 21, 2009 at 5:20 am · Filed under Ken's Blog
Loutro
Friday was a day when the students concentrated on human geography and what they set out to identify was that sustainable tourism might contribute to the development of the area in the context of the harsher physical environment, traditional Cretan society, modern tourism and twenty first century economic and social aspirations.
The groups had all presented their plans for the day to Alan at breakfast time and as a higher proportion were going to Loutro first it was decided that the staff would take the opportunity to go to take the ferry as well. This also gave them the chance to walk seaward round the headland to the west and inspect the nick points where the land had risen and disabled the harbour that had been used in biblical times. Alan showed his agility in climbing on to a rock mass which clearly showed this event also allowing for a video recording to give a sense of scale.
Alan, Richard and Ken then proceed back to the present harbour where they partook of an excellent lunch split between main course and sweet which in turn was split between two different beach front restaurants. A group of students showed some cheeky initiative in interviewing the staff as their reasons for being in that part of the world. Obviously they were running out people to talk to or maybe running out of questions to ask as they pretty obvious why the staff were there.
A price was obtained for a small motor boat to run the staff back to Chora Sfakion in time for the evening round up meeting. This meeting could nearly have been cancelled as a less agile Alan mistimed his jump on to the ferry boat ramp albeit with a miraculous and rapid recovery.
June 20, 2009 at 5:17 am · Filed under Ken's Blog
- Loutro to Chora Sfakion coastal path
Thursday saw the whole group take the ferry to Loutro where again the groups reformed and started walking the coastal path back to Chora Sfakion. The objective this time was to observe and investigate evidence of more recent geomorpholgical processes than the single seismic event that caused the great uplift to the western end of Crete in the late Roman period.
The groups walked at their own pace and now in a more practiced way were marking waypoints on their hand held GPS at observation points and photograph locations. This would make it easier to visualize when they later uploaded the GPS to their group dell mini 9 notebooks that had been issued back in the UK.
A lunch time stop was made at Sweetwater Beach (Glynkera) where the students swam, had lunch and another brief update from Alan. A group of students were closely observed by a nudist to see if they noted information about a relatively new land slip that he had given them when fully clothed the previous evening. The group however marched past eyes averted, probably because the area was where the nature lovers were in abundance.
The afternoon saw the trek over the large debris cone and the cliff climb going through the well photographed overhang. The coastal path then meandered round the cliff face climbing at times quite steeply to eventually reach the road that goes back to Chora Sfakion via the mouth of Ilingas gorge.
June 20, 2009 at 4:56 am · Filed under Ken's Blog
Alan in Ilingas gorge
Wednesday saw the Students undertake the Ilingas gorge project. In preparation sessions they had researched methodology of data capture and they had practised with the measurement devices that they would be taking.
The Ilingas gorge was affected by a large flood on December 2000 and the students now had to work out the magnitude of the peak flow and whether there is any evidence of the flood sequence preserved in the deposits and if so does it show there was a single flood, multiple floods and/or a dam burst followed by lower flows.
The day started with the students navigating by GPS units to a map reference which was the beach at the mouth of the gorge. After a brief introduction to their day ahead Alan led the students en mass for one and a half kilometres up the gorge to an elevation of 250 metres. One student felt an asthma attack coming on, however after sitting in the shade and using an inhaler climbed up to join rejoin the others who had found some shade and were eating their lunch. The students then split up in their respective groups in order to return down the gorge making observations, taking measurements and entering it into their field notebooks.
Treated casualties for the day were two insect bites with one untreated casualty of a student’s walking boot that had shed its heel on the descent. After the evening meal the students combined in their groups and updated the blogs that they had setup as part of their field trip preparation.
June 20, 2009 at 4:26 am · Filed under Ken's Blog
Chora Sfakion
The students and staff that made up the 2009 Crete field trip met on Chancellors Way at 0545hrs Tuesday morning, all present and correct. The coach arrived punctually for 0600hrs and a pre rush hour journey to Gatwick was completed in just over an hour, checking in, security checks then commenced and everyone proceeded through to the duty free area and on to board the Monarch plane flight no. Mon 1472. The take off was prompt at 1015 hours and the plane completed the flight 30mins early, landing at 1545hrs after adjusting watches forward by 2 hours. The onward coach was awaiting and was away at 1650 taking one and a half hours to reach Chora Spakion.
Student and staff were allocated rooms and shortly after some were dining whilst others were having a swim from the beach just below the Hotel Livikon. After the evening meal the wireless connections were investigated and the hotel Three Brothers kindly allowed use of their connection. All in all the journey had been completed remarkably free of strife and the staff had negotiated internet connections for staff and students to use in completion of the internet portion of the module.
It is quite remarkable to think that the party was now ensconced in what had once been a remote village in Crete and the course convenor was sitting in a cafe with a wireless connection having a face to face conversation with his wife having left her in a remote village in Wiltshire that very morning.
