I spent 3 days in Teignmouth last week. Teignmouth, at the mouth of the River Teign, is a coastal town in South Devon (http://www.devon-online.com/towns/teignmouth/teignmouth.html). I went along with the Ocean Science students to assist with the coastal oceanography field work. The weather was gorgeous all throughout, and the distractions were plentiful -- Oyster Catcher's Cafe, Amanda's Bakery, Harbourside Fish n Chips, pubs, bookshops, u name it.
There were various activities going on through the day; my task was to get the students to assess the grain size of the beach using a technique of sediment-scanning and image analysis, somewhat different to the traditional method of sieving sediment. Of course, I had already sieved many samples of the beach sand to establish a calibration data set against which the scanned images were compared in MATLAB. Needless to say, I spent my entire time roaming the beach, getting students to sample various parts of it. The back beach is so different to the front beach, in every way! I can't decide which one I prefer. I'll probably go back and decide.
