After meeting with our supervisor, Professor Bennett, and his colleague, Dr. Sally Reynolds, to update them on our progress and challenges (no rain, therefore no mud) we changed our strategy. Since the rain didn’t seem to be coming, we’ll go find water! Dr. Reynolds sent us off from our meeting with the mantra, ‘May the mud be with you’!

Our strategy for this day’s work was a change in location. We would not be going to Talbot Woods, which is opposite Bournemouth University, we’ll embark on a 6 mile journey to Christchurch to look for footprints beside rivers well-known to my colleague Sam. Everyone loves a splash every now and then in water! We were hoping they would have left some footprints behind that we could document.

Unfortunately, we were not as successful as we would hoped.

We only found limited prints.

But the day was not lost. After completing our fieldwork, we continued working on other aspects of the research. There is always work to be done! Footprint and footwear impressions collected from the Footprints on the Beach event were processed using Track Transformer and Agisoft Photoscan software products.

Screen shot of the Track Transformer software in use.

We have also began brainstorming ideas for fun, informative worksheets for school aged children to do, so that they can engage in our research.

On a final note, I must say the skies were really dark at the end of the day and there was a bit of drizzle. Hopefully it rains overnight!

Carlyle

Update on fieldwork done on 23-07-15.

PS. I’ve cheated and written this blog a day late. So I do know it rained continuously overnight! I also know today, Friday, is a very rainy day! The next blog should be a success story!