Malham Tarn!

HOMG like finally! Mocks is done, and even though the real exam isn't too far off at least now I've got a bit of time to blog properly! This is the Malham Tarn post, up only like, almost 2 months later! So here we go. 

Day 1

So we had to get up at an unearthly hour of 5.30 am (!) to catch the 7.22 train to Ely. D: We had to switch a lot of trains that day, but each train ride was only about half an hour? Longest train ride was an hour plus, which was from Peterborough to Leeds and it took approximately another hour for us to reach Settle.

Zainab and Anthony came late, I knew Zainab came late because her phone died in the middle of the night and her alarm didn't go off but I don't know what happened to Anthony though. So the rest of us went first and they joined us later. :P It was kinda like Amazing Race, where they were trying to catch up with us and all. Haha.

This is us to Ely! 

Sunrise. Yes it was THAT early in the morning. 

Reached Ely, then we were on the train to Peterborough.

Geoffrey and my tiger. :)

Peterborough station, waiting for the train to Leeds.

Poor pup on the train track. :( A little kid must have dropped it.

By the time we were on the train to Leeds everyone started to lose their hype and the fatigue from waking up two hours earlier than usual started to kick in. 

At Leeds station!

After about half an hour's wait, we were on the train to Settle!

I have been told that this is a more beautiful part of England and damn were they right. You get green scenery all over England when you are on the train, even from Cambridge to London, but this place is, like an undiscovered treasure.

Settle station. It's a very old station. 

Sabina and Geoffrey.

Settle town. Very traditional English town. 

And after a grueling twenty minutes of mountain climbing in the minibus, we were here! Malham Tarn Field Studies Centre. With the tarn right in front of us. (A tarn is a mini lake. I just found out about that when I got there).

Our tutor during that five days was a really awesome guy called Cian. He's really nice and he did his job really well, all of us learnt so much with him. Apparently he was gonna leave that place soon, so the Lower Sixth students this year who will most likely going on this trip next year will not have him, which is a pity because Cian was a really, really good tutor! He mentioned that he wanted to go down south, to escape from the colder northern region, and we're kinda hoping he'd be coming to Cambridge and work as a Bio teacher in Abbey. Haha.
Upon reaching Cian allotted us to our rooms before giving us a tour around the place. I got Alison as my roomie, AGAIN.

My bed. Hehe. I got to sleep on the top. There was another bunk bed, and Alison slept on the top of that one. They gave us a room big enough for four, but there wasn't a toilet and shower in our room so we had to use the one all the way at the end of the corridor! The sad thing was, everyone else's room was en suite, for some reason ours was the only one which wasn't. And since the toilet we were using wasn't exclusively ours, other people, especially the guys, since all five of them shared a room and a toilet, used that toilet as well if they couldn't wait for their turn. Sigh. 

Bunk bed! :D

We then got to do some field work, first one in the woods, second one by the tarn.

The pretty tarn!

Getting ready to catch some algae for the oxygen experiment thing. 

After that Cian took us to this pretty place by the tarn. There were sheep grazing everywhere (though they were quite scared of us) and it was so green!

Geoffrey. -.-

Cian asked us to draw what we see, and he kinda explained how the non-living stuff affected the living stuff and all. 

This was my drawing. Far from the original but fair enough!

SHEEP!

This is the Malham Tarn House (and Kok Weng), which is now the Malham Tarn Field Studies Centre. It's quite an old house, built like two hundred years ago. Apparently one of the previous owners from a century ago can still be seen in the attic. Scary. 

Dinner time! :) The place fed us a lot, seriously. We had garlic bread and pasta, and then chocolate pudding for dessert. And that was just day one!

After dinner we had a class (Yes, how sad, class at 7 pm) but that was only like, for an hour. Then we had to go out and set up traps for the wood mice so that we can mark them and count the population. We didn't do the second capture though, which was sad cos they're really adorable! We should have taken one home and kept it as our lab pet. :P
Then we called it a night, and everyone knocked out almost immediately cos they were so tired!

Day 2
After breakfast and packing lunch, we had to meet up in class before we all went out again. We spent quite a lot of time outside in that trip, and thankfully it wasn't raining a lot. We were really lucky cos the northern region is famous for their colder, rainier, gloomier weather!

In class. 

After meeting up in class we went out to check how many mice got caught in our little traps. 12 of us set up traps, including Louise and Lisa, and, out of the 12 traps, only 2 had mice. -.- 

The one holding the bag is Cian, the coolest Bio tutor alive who likes Green Day. 

Naww you schooshy mooshy little rat. 

After that, we were off to Gordale Beck to do some freshwater sampling! The weather was nice, albeit windy, so we walked to the site, which took about, half an hour? The pretty view around made the climb less tiresome. :)

Geoffrey, Gasem, and Saqib. 

Gordale Beck! :) 

My partner for this task was Anthony and we caught a lot of crap in our sample! Haha.
It was so windy that my papers flew off my clipboard and fell into the stream. I got them back though, and even though it was all wet my data were thankfully not written in ink. 

Lunch time. :) 

Geoffrey. -___- 

King of factory workers. 

Some of the stuff we caught. :) 

Later that afternoon when we were walking back to the house, Geoffrey's wellies got stuck in the mud. If that's not hilarious enough, he was playing the Lord Of The Rings theme song on his phone, cos he was trying to act cool and all, walking with a scenery similar to that in The Lord Of The Rings, and halfway his boot got stuck in the mud, with the song still playing. Oh, Geoffrey Yong, why.

The sheep! Ah they were EVERYWHERE! So yeah occasionally you'd find their poop in your path but STILL! ADORABLE SHIZ YO. 

Then later in the classroom, Cian was explaining to us on how to calculate our results and also on the little invertebrates we caught.
Even later in the afternoon, we went back to the lake to collect the results for the experiment from the day before and suddenly Sabina caught sight of this little wood mouse, sad and alone. 

Someone may have accidentally trampled on the poor little fella. :( 

Kok. 

After collecting our results we chilled for a bit before dinner! Dinner was papadoms and chicken curry with rice and we had ice cream for dessert! :9 Went back to class for awhile, then off to our rooms, and Sabina, Zainab, Saqib, and Gasem hung out in our room for awhile that night. 

Day 3

Had a little time in the morning, so I was just walking around looking at the stuff in the main entrance. 

Yeah, apparently if we had gone a bit further from the spot we were doing our freshwater sampling the day before, we would have got to the place which inspired a few locations in The Lord Of The Rings trilogy. 

And a wee bit of Harry Potter too. 

Poem written by William Wordsworth based on Yorkshire Dales. 

Quadrat sampling after that, and I got Gasem as my partner! I feel bad cos he was doing all the hard work while I was just writing down stuff. :P 

Back to class, then later that afternoon we were supposed to do one of our compulsory assessed practicals. I know right, a test, on a Sunday. Sigh. It was quite an easy practical, though I was the last to finish and Louise, Lisa and Cian were just like hanging out there watching me while everyone was back inside the house hanging out in the common room. Talk about awkward. Went back to find out Manchester United lost 1-6 to Man City. Not a Man City fan, but, still, it was good to know Man U lost THAT badly. >:D Off to class to finish up Part 2 of the practical, then it was near dinner time, not only for us but also for the crayfishes which the place keeps! Guess what was for dinner for them?
Well, after Cian explained all the stuff on the invertebrates we pretty much didn't need them anymore, so..
Bye stoneflies, mayflies, and worms. :/ 

And we spent a good ten minutes watching crayfishes fight over food and stuff. 

Then it was time for OUR dinner! Sunday roast with Yorkshire pudding, cos, well, it was Sunday night. Basically it's just beef with some veggie and potatoes and Yorkshire pudding..

..Like this. You'd find it in English pubs as well. How English. 

Meat was a wee bit too tough but there rest was alright! Some fruit cake thing for dessert after that. 

Sabina and Kok Weng

After another hour of class, we hung out at the common room, just talking, singing, dancing, playing chess, watching dino porn... 

Sabina and Zainab. 

Party rocking in the Tarn House tonight! 

Kok challenging Rose in chess. 

Sir Walter, one of the previous owners of the house. 

Watching the dino show. Haha. 

Then it was bed time, and then now,...

Day 4!

Breakfast. Haha. There aren't usually this many vegetarians, only Alison, but the Muslims prefer not to eat the meat cos it's not halal. :P 

After breakfast, we went to study succession at the bog! A bog is sort of like a swamp, if you didn't know. The bog we went to is a UK and EU protected site, and there is a walkway there made of plank to minimise the damage done by visitors to the bog. 

Did more sampling with my partner Gasem and collected some soil.

Just Alison unintentionally sitting like a child. 

Sampling.

Later that afternoon, after class and lunch, we went to a quarry! We had to go by minibus cos, well, if we walked it will take pretty much the whole day. So we got to see the other parts of the Yorkshire Dales National Park, and it was really, really amazing! We went past little villages and a little river and gosh I am really considering buying a little cottage there and living there when I'm old and grey. 

This is the quarry! 

And we have to wear safety vests.

The restoration area. The people at the quarry have this to sort of like, make up for the damage they do. 

The quarry. Strong winds that day, so we didn't get to go closer to the quarry, and we didn't get to wear the cool helmets. :/ 

Guy explaining. 

Geoffrey and Kok.

Alison.

Hoot hoot hoot. 

Kok.

By the time we got back, it was close to dinner time, and since I have this new policy where I am vegetarian every Monday, while the others were having beef lasagne, 

... salad for me. :/ 

Sticky toffee pudding for dessert! Gosh, diabetes in a plate. I swear, all of us must have gained at least 2 kg while we were there. Not only we get such awesome food for dinner, we have cake every afternoon as well! If you walk into the tearoom in the afternoon you'd find this huge tupperware of cake with the label Abbey College on it, and gosh their cakes are good!

Hung out in the class later that evening. 

Day 5

Had another assessed practical that morning. After breakfast we set off for the woods and this one took a little longer cos there was more stuff to do and all. Went back to class to finish up the Part 2, then got all our stuff from the room and it was time to go! 

To the Settle train station.

Bye Settle. :( 

On the train to Leeds. 

Leeds train station, where we got stuck for an hour cos our initial train got cancelled. 

At Leeds, we were supposed to take this train to Stevenage, and then to Cambridge, but since it got cancelled we had to find a train that goes to London's King's Cross and stops at the stations in between. Upon reaching Leeds we were checking our the schedule, and there was a train leaving for King's Cross in two minutes! So Louise was like, okay, if we run really fast we will be able to make it, and suddenly all twelve of us were like, running across the Leeds train station. Unfortunately when EVERYONE finally reached the train the doors closed right in front of our faces and we had to wait another hour for the next one. So everyone just chilled, hung out around the station and getting McDonalds.
Still. I felt like I was in a movie.
Only that, in the movies, the people usually make it.

Off to Peterborough from Leeds, and everyone's so tired by then. 

From Peterborough we took the Stansted Express to Cambridge, and it was so crowded!  

Reached Cambridge a little later than we had expected, and then had dinner with Kok Weng, Alison and Geoffrey. 

Coming to the A2 Bio class was kinda a huge change for me because, well, from a class of 9 Malaysians and 1 Korean, now we have 4 Malaysians, 1 native English, 1 Russian, 1 Nigerian, 1 Gambian and 1 Pakistani. The 6 (the non-Malaysians) which I have previously never shared classes with are from the Lower Sixth group, while I am from the 18 Month group cos I came in January, and at first it was kinda weird for me cos Geoffrey, Alison, and Kok Weng knew the others from medic group. This trip really allowed me to bond with my Bio class and I have to say, we are a pretty awesome Bio family. :D 

But seriously, I wanna go back to that place someday. There is no words to describe how pretty Yorkshire Dales is, my camera just doesn't do that place justice. 

I think I've got my retirement plan set out already.... 

Suet Tyng