THE WOOD

The Trip Begins ! We all arrived in school at nine o clock as usual, we were looking forward to our class trip. We walked down to Bryn -y-Bia Road and got on the coach. The journey took about forty minutes. When we arrived in Cae'n y Coed we were met by Ioan. He told us about the area and the protected tree's. We asked questions about his job and then he told us what we'd be doing during the rest of the day

Our Morning Activities Exploring The Broadleaf Woods Our first activity was to walk around and collect leaves, we found about six different types. They were Oak, Chestnut, Ash, Sycamore, Beech and Willow. Then Ioan told us to find baby trees, there were loads, we found around forty. It was obviously a good place for them to grow. We looked through the treetops to see how much light we could see shining through. We decided it was about 4/10. The temperature of the soil was 10.5 degree's celsius, it had a thin layer of leaf litter on top which was broken down into smaller bits below and underneath it felt like compost. The most exciting part of the day came next, we searched for mini beasts and had a key to identify any insects we didn't recognise. We found spiders, maggots, snails, ants, centipede and many others. When we put them in a tray together some of the insects tried to eat others. This was a good example of a food chain within a habitat. We studied some other examples before lunch.

Dinner Time! We sat on benches to eat our lunch, we had all brought packed lunches. Afterwards we played insects games, it was lot's of fun.

Our Afternoon Activities Exploring The Conifer forest. During the afternoon we went up to the conifer forest, it was a very long walk but the weather was fine. We repeated all the morning's activities, looking for leaves, finding baby tree's and searching for mini beasts, but our results were very different. There weren't many leaves on the floor only pines, there were no baby trees at all , and all though we searched and searched we could only find a few insects. It was cold in the conifer forest and the tall trees blocked out most of the light. We could only see about 3/10 of the sun. The temperature of the soil was also lower, it was 8 degrees celsius. Some of the small trees had stopped growing because they weren't getting much light or warmth and their small roots couldn't compete for water and minerals against the larger roots of the bigger tree's. The conifer forest didn't have such a good habitat.

The Trip Ends We were tired when we got back to the bus but we had all had a great day and learnt a lot about trees, leaves, insects and food chains. We had compared both forests and seen how different they were.