Written by Beth Brown, PARTRIDGE project placement student, University of Sheffield.
A few weeks into our placement at GWCT, and we students get to take part in some 4 x 4 training! All fun and games, until you realise you need to rewire your brain from everything your younger self was taught - even emergency brakes entail something different!
I’m a BSc Geography student from the University of Sheffield, assisting the NSR PARTRIDGE Project under Dr Francis Buner. I wanted to do this placement to gain a deeper and more contextual understanding of climate change and the farmland biodiversity crisis, in order to develop more specific ideas for future career choices. Already I can see the widespread importance of farmland conservation – for wildlife biodiversity but also food agriculture, livelihoods and so on.
So far in the office I have been tasked with a vast amount of reading from blog posts to annual reports, to get me up to scratch on the essential ins and outs of the PARTRIDGE project. I’m looking forward to being out in the field and taking part in hare counts and, later in the year, partridge counts! This is where the 4x4 training comes into use - it is vital for us to be able to undertake fieldwork over the next year.
We headed to the training course at All Terrain Services near Reading not knowing what to expect, but a theory lesson later, we were in the woods satisfying our expectations. Trawling along in the Mitsubishi Pick Up, not feeling too different from a tractor, was very strange. Forget clutch control and stalling - just relax and take your feet off!
The course involved lots of wet muddy tracks, branches, tree stumps, and deep puddles, and all these obstacles were faced throughout the day. At times it felt a bit uncomfortable when driving along a steep side slope being pulled to one side, but it was surprising how stable the 4x4 was – a big contrast to our tiny cars!
Relearning some of the basic ‘rules’ of driving proved harder for some than others. I received a comment that I ‘like to practice techniques to perfect them!’ The training proved more difficult than I anticipated, but by the end (once getting over the hump of ‘relearning’ old skills) I felt competent enough to take a 4x4 for a drive and I now know a bit more about car mechanics.
Students on Day 3 of the training seemed to have the most excitement. Anna Thompson, the placement student in the Wetlands department, said: ‘Some of the course routes were very challenging, and there were moments when I doubted that both the car and I would make it through! But it was great fun navigating the various obstacles, and with the help of Paul and the other trainees, I completed the training intact and smiling. Learning how to tackle failed hill climbs allowed me to deal with wheel spin while navigating steep slopes, and I’m confident that in the future I will be able to handle any terrain faced on fieldwork!’
It was a fun day and gave us all invaluable knowledge we will undoubtedly use in the future, both within the placement and beyond in our future careers!