River Wear Tuesday 27-11-2012

10.00am

2.00pm

The webcam today shows how the height of the river is likely to have peaked in the night and gradually decreased throughout the day.  Above are two photos that show this decrease - look at the path on the RHS to see the difference.

River Wear in Flood - November 26th 2012

As rain affects many parts of the UK, with several places in flood, the River Wear also bursts its banks.  I have found a new webcam that shows the levels of the River Wear in the city centre in almost real time (there is a lag of approximately 20mins on the camera).  It is located next to The Gates shopping centre and if you click on the times at the top of the picture you get an image with the height superimposed on it.  I have shown the difference between 9.00am this morning and 3.00pm this afternoon.

9am

3pm

Conflict between Israel and Palestinians

Year 9 have been looking into issues related to water scarcity in the Middle East and have recently looked at the conflict that exists between Israelis and Palestinians.  This is a challenging topic and is difficult for many adults to understand as it is a historic yet very complex conflict.  Below I have posted a link to some of the pictures BBC have published about the recent conflict going on between Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza.  The Palestinians in this area that Israel are fighting are the Hamas which are classed by the West as an extremist organisation,  however by Turkey and nearby countries they are not.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-20383584

Remembrance Service with Belmont Juniors

Year 9 Form Representatives attended a short Remembrance Service in Belmont at the war memorial at the top of Carville High Street.  The juniors sang and read acrostic poems that they had written specially with a focus on love towards all.  Beth Percy and Aidan Barnabas read poems, then Jack Ball laid the poppy wreath on behalf of everyone at Belmont Community School.  It was a short, yet moving service.

Maldives - Case Study for Coastal Flooding

Year 10 last week were looking at coastal flooding and as part of their understanding have to have detailed knowledge of the social, economic and enviromental impact of coastal flooding in regards to a case study.  The case study we use is the Maldives in the India Ocean and it just so happened that the Sunday night before I happened to watch the BBC2 programme  'Indian Ocean with Simon Reeve' episode 4 - Oman to the Maldives.  The second half of this programme (forward to around 31mins to start the Maldives section) described many of the effects we have looked at and gives many more interesting facts too, including the island that they use as a dumping ground which is very different to the idyllic scene the tourists see!

You can watch this on the BBC iplayer at

Indian_Ocean_with_Simon_Reeve_Oman_to_the_Maldives/

He has a blog and website that is quite interesting too - links to these can be found on the iplayer page above and the programme website is below:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/tv/2012/05/indian-ocean-simon-reeve.shtml 

Day 5 - Travelling back home

Got up ridiculously early this morning! Flight a bit turbulent due to the wind but made it back ok but battling the traffic on M62 at the minute! All the students on the trip have impeccably behaved - thank you to you all for making it a really enjoyable and successful trip.

Day 4 - Reykjavik

Today we walked into Reykjavik town centre for a look at the local shops and culture. We visited their famous white church which was extremely modern looking. Several purchases were made within the group including, limited edition albums, t-shirts, Christmas decorations and various souvenirs! Unfortunately we had a phone call at this point to say that the whale watching as cancelled as conditions were getting worse so even if we changed to the south shore to do it, it was too dangerous so no boats were leaving the harbour that day. So then we managed to organise an impromptu second visit to the Blue Lagoon. Even there it was a lot colder than it had been on the Monday when we'd arrived! It had waves on it due to the gales blowing! Later we braved the wind to try and visit a restaurant recommended to us by our hide guide, Sara! It wasn't out day as it was fully booked! So we headed back to our hotel ! Tomorrow is an early start - 5am!!!!!

Church in Reykjavik

Harbour at Reykjavik

Our second visit to the Blue Lagoon - a bit more chilly this time!

Day 3 - South Shore Tour

Today we saw the most amazing waterfalls I have ever seen. We stopped first at Skogar which was extremely impressive and the rock profiles at the side of the gorge looked like the profile of a troll!! We then passed on their most famous Volcanoes called Katla (which is due to erupt). We looked at amazing hexagonal columnar blocks on a black beach! We also got the added bonus of visiting a glacier - this the highlight of today as the internal caves and crevasses were amazing but also quite enchanting. We visited another waterfall which we had hoped to walk behind but the ice was so slippy we could not do it. Later on we had a Halloween face painting competition which Amy W won! Not sure what we are doing tomorrow as forecast is for worsening stormy conditions near Reykjavik.

Beautiful columnar blocks on the black basaltic beach

Snow storm in the morning!

On (or rather under) the glacier!