Thursday 22 March 2012

Tuesday 13th March


Only Janine, Natasha and I were able to make it today, so we started the survey with quite a lot of time working out what was going to be the most effective way of ensuring that we leave no stone unvisited! 

My first idea was to mark the four corners of a 100m or 200m square out with GPS and then go over it carefully. A 200m square turned out to be too big because we couldn’t see the corner markings well enough, especially with only three of us available. So we tried a 100m square, working from a base line and moving 20m at a time, measured by the GPS. Then we decided that we might as well keep going and walk much longer transect guided by the GPS. That seemed to be going splendidly for most of the morning, provided we managed to walk on the line set by the GPS. But then in the afternoon we discovered that the reason that we were finding it difficult to walk straight wasn’t anything to do with us - the GPS was jumping about six or eight metres at a time, and we were covering some areas two or three times! 

So we concluded that the only realistic way we were going to be able to do it was to orient ourselves by the topography. But we did manage to cover a swathe to the north of the road that runs east-west under Carn Penbugail, on its way to Bedlinog.

Dr. Edith Evans

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