Happy Yorkshire Day!

Since 1975, August 1st has been a day to celebrate tea, flat caps and all other things Yorkshire.

Yorkshire Day began as a protest against the re-organisation of England's county boundaries which took place in 1974, to remind people of the traditional culture and heritage of Yorkshire. The date of 1st August is significant as it is the anniversary of the Battle of Minden, when soldiers from Yorkshire regiments picked white roses from hedgerows near the battlefields as a tribute to their fallen comrades.

The Yorkshire Day celebrations take place in a different Yorkshire town or city each year, and this year, to coincide with the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade in Britain, it is the turn of Hull. Today, the mayors of every Yorkshire town and city gathered in Hull for a civic procession and lunch as the guests of the Lord Mayor of Kingston-upon-Hull.

Keith Madeley, who is Chairman of the Yorkshire Society and has had a special Yorkshire pinstripe suit made for the occasion, has been talking to to the Bradford Telegraph & Argus about why Yorkshire is so special.

Mr Madeley was also interviewed recently by Radio Derby, as the first ever Derbyshire Day will be taking place in September this year...

Anyway, Happy Yorkshire Day to you all - and to celebrate... seven famous Yorkshire places for you to name!

Photographs from http://www.geograph.co.uk/ and http://www.saltsmill.org.uk/

Tomorrow...

A special day round 'ere! A bit of a clue as to why...

More tomorrow!

Your Climate Your Life

I've just started to explore the excellent new website from the RGS - Your Climate Your Life... The site looks at climate change, but focuses on how it is affecting our lives - what we buy, what we eat, where we live, where we go on holiday, etc.

Your Climate Your Life

I'm bored!

Six whole weeks and no school! If you are short of something to do, try out some of Keri Smith's "100 ideas" to get you thinking...

And if you need some space to think, you can buy some! Check out one of Dan Raven Ellison's many great ideas - Thinking Space

I've mentioned My Walks before, but I still think it's a great idea, and if you haven't investigated it and thought differently about some of your own walks, do it now!

Take your camera with you if you're going somewhere... Set up a Flickr account and share your photos... And send some of them in to Geograph...

And most of all, to quote a certain history teacher - ENJOY!

Atlas Schmatlas!

Alan Parkinson has put lots of interesting bits and pieces on his blog today... The one that interested me most was this new book which is out in October... Click on the picture to link to Craig Robinson's website and find out more...

Inverted World... And other "Strange Maps"!

This "inverse" map of the world - imagining what it would be like if all the world's water was land, and vice versa - is one of the "strange maps" on the Strange Maps blog that Alan Parkinson has just blogged about... Lots of other interesting bits and pieces on there as well!

Anyone for Alton Towers?

Looking at the weather forecast, it seems that Yr9 will be in the best place as far as trips are concerned tomorrow... Severe weather warnings have been issued (again!) for the whole of England and Wales - looks like Alton Towers and Drayton Manor will be fun!!

Year 10 should be able to look at the pressure chart below and explain why they are getting wet, whilst Year 9 are inside ski-ing and snowboarding!

Click on the picture to link to the Met Office website to find out more... And don't forget to let us know what the weather is like where you are!

Send us a postcard!

Another little competition that I hoped would be in Hallmark this week, but for some reason didn't make it... However, I might as well tell you about it just in case...

The Geography Department would like you to send us a postcard this summer... It makes no difference whether you are going to Bakewell or the Bahamas - pick a postcard that shows what the place is like, tell us about where you are, what you're doing, what the weather's like, etc. and send it to Miss Ellis at school... The school address is available from the website, or email and I will send it to you.

One postcard from each year group will be selected in September, and its owner will win a geographical goody bag!

More flooding misery...

Just spotted these pictures on the Sky News site from Filey, on the east coast of Yorkshire... You wouldn't think it was July...!!

World without people??

What would happen to the world if all the people disappeared? Have a look at this excellent video (thanks David and Val!)...

Turn to 30!

Val Vannet has found this excellent image... Click on the picture to find out what it's advertising, and find out why you should "turn to 30"!!

Busy!!

Apologies for the lack of posts recently...

Yesterday I was in Leeds, listening to Edexcel trying to sell their new A level course which will be ready for teaching from September 2008... If any of you, especially those who've just finished A levels or might be thinking of A level Geography in the next couple of years, are short of something to do and fancy having a look at the new specs, I'd be interested to hear what you have to say! You can find them by visiting the exam board websites (Edexcel, AQA, OCR, WJEC) or come and see me...

I also had a trip down to London last week, for an excellent course about Google Earth, run by GE guru Noel Jenkins... I learnt lots, and also had chance to play with a fantastic "space navigator" . Now that (I hope!) we have Google Earth on the network, 7RPr will be having a chance to find out a bit more about it...

On Saturday, I was at the University of Leeds, for the 21st Century Geography Conference - some really interesting lectures (including regeneration/rebranding in Leeds, and avalanche risk in Iceland), and great to meet up with fellow geography teachers... What I saw of the Geography Department at Leeds looked excellent - worth checking out for those of you thinking of Geography at university!

Supermarkets and their "green revolution"

Walk into any supermarket these days, and you will be bombarded with messages about buying British, and re-using your carrier bags... Part of Marks & Spencer's environmental campaign ("Plan A, Because there is no Plan B") is to encourage its customers to do their washing at 30o instead of 40o.

But why are they doing all this? I've wondered for a while now whether they actually care about the environment or whether it's all just a marketing ploy, and a conversation with one of my Yr9s today, and this really interesting article I've just found on the BBC website reveal that I am not on my own!

What do you think?

Wake up and smell the coffee....

Black Gold tells the story of Tadesse Meskela, on a one man mission to save his 74,000 coffee farmers in Ethiopia from bankruptcy, and follows Tadesse as he travels the world in an attempt to find buyers who will pay a fair price for his coffee.



The film was released on 8th June in the UK, and is showing at the Ritz Cinema in Belper on 30th June and 4th/5th July, and at the Nottingham Broadway from 6th to 12th July.

More information about the film and other screenings here...

Go and see it, and leave a comment to tell us what you thought!

I don't think I want to go camping....

Just checked the Met Office website, in the hope that it would tell me that the rain was going to stop before the D of E weekend away... But instead...

What's it like where you are??

Lights out for London

Lights were switched off across London for an hour last night to encourage people to conserve energy... According to this report from the BBC, if all Londoners had switched off their lights, 380 tonnes of carbon dioxide would have been saved - enough to fill the Royal Albert Hall twice! It was the first time that the lights at Piccadilly Circus had been turned off since World War II.

Are you suffering from teenage affluenza?

Boscastle flooding

The Cornish village of Boscastle, made famous by the devastating flood it experienced in August 2004, is under water again this evening.

Things are not as bad as they were in 2004, due to the new flood defences that have been built since then, but it's brought back unhappy memories for many in the village.

Video coverage from the BBC here and the full story here.

"Iconic Super-Stadium"

That is how the proposed new Forest ground has been described...

Plans were unveiled yesterday for a purpose-built 50000 seat stadium in Clifton, costing £45-55 million. If it gets the go-ahead, the new stadium will "embrace new transport infrastructure developments, the latest in green technology and be a focus for new jobs and events - helping to boost the reputations and economies of both the city and the county". Click on the artist's impression of the new stadium above to link to the Nottingham Forest website, where you can read more about the plans, and watch the press conference where the plans were revealed.

But not everyone is supportive of the idea! Particularly concerned are residents in nearby Gotham are worried that the stadium would spoil their village... Read the story on the BBC news site, where you can also see Mark Arthur's statement at the press conference, and watch a video of what the new ground might look like.

What do you think of the plans? Are you a Forest fan? Do Forest need a new ground? Is the proposed site a good place for a new ground?

(Thanks to Tony Cassidy who blogged about this story yesterday.)

Happy camping??

The D of E group are off for their assessed expedition this weekend... After our last couple of lessons, Year 10 can hopefully predict from the pressure chart below whether it'll be my waterproofs or my suncream that I'll need!


Click on the chart to go to the Met Office website for more clues...