Geography Coursework

Pickering is a historic market town located in North Yorkshire, between York and the North Yorkshire coast. Pickering has many tourist attractions like, the steam railway, Pickering castle, the market and the countryside. It is the gateway to the North York Moors National Park, with its appealing scenery. We are interested to find out what it is that specifically attracts tourists to that area.
This is a map of Pickering along with the attractions of Pickering
Two groups took a geography trip to Pickering on two separate days and. Both groups created their own questionnaires and we asked random members of the public these questions. These are some of the questions we asked people while we were in Pickering. Once we had received our results from our questionnaires we compared them with the other group’s results

1.Do you live in: A. Pickering
B. the area around Pickering
C. or are you a tourist
2.What would you say is the main tourist attraction
A. The castle
B. The steam railway
C. The countryside
3. What method of transport did you use to get here today
A. Walk
B. Car
C. Bus
D. Other
4. How long did it take you to travel here today
A. Less than 15 minutes
B. 15 minutes – 1 hour
C. 1 hour +
5. If you are local:
Do you do most of your shopping in Pickering
I Yes
ii No
6. If you are a tourist: A Is this your first visit to Pickering
I Yes
ii No
B. Would you visit Pickering again
Table A
Where people live Wednesday Thursday
Pickering 58% 52%
Around Pickering 26% 18%
Tourists 16% 30%
With these results you can clearly see that a majority of the interviewees were mainly from Pickering. This is somewhat unexpected as Pickering relies on tourists to visit the area. I think the groups went at the wrong time of year because if we went during the school holidays then you should see that there would be an increase in the number of tourists because they would have the time off school and work. :
Diagram A
My first hypothesis is that on the day that I went on the trip to Pickering I thought there were more local people than tourists. I can prove this with my results from Diagram A and Table A from our questionnaires we asked. However if we had visited Pickering on the market day then we would have seen an increase in the number of local people as the market would attract more local people rather than tourists.
Table B
The main tourist attraction Wednesday Thursday
Castle 12% 15%
Steam railway 64% 55%
Countryside 17% 15%
Other 7% 15%
Diagram B
The results above show that the on both days the steam railway is the favoured tourist attraction with the majority of the percentage. These results are not exactly unexpected for the reason that the steam railway travels through the countryside so people would still catch a glimpse of the countryside, but because they are on the steam railway they would maybe think that the attraction they are seeing is the steam railway when actually they are viewing the countryside as well.
This is a picture of the favourite tourist attraction the steam railway.
With my second hypothesis I can say that people preferred the steam railway to the other attractions. I can show this with Diagram B and Table B for the reason that my results show that on Wednesday 64% of people preferred the railway and on Thursday 55% of people favoured the steam railway to the other attractions.
Table C
Transport Wednesday Thursday
Walk 20% 30%
Car 56.5% 36%
Bus 14.5% 18%
Steam train 6.5% 10%
Other 3% 6%
With these figure we have collated you can clearly see that the main method of transport was the car. This isn’t surprising seen as people rely too much on cars at present, with the majority of people owning one. This is surprising seen as the main tourist attraction is the steam railway so they must have left their cars in the car park while they travelled on the steam railway. After the car, walking was next on both days. With the groups both going during school time and not in a holiday, there would have been more interviewees that are local to the area of Pickering and would have been able to walk there.
My group’s results were:
Diagram C.
For the third hypothesis I can say that the favoured method of transport would be the car. I can back this up with Diagram C and Table C because 56.5% used a car on Wednesday and 36% on Thursday. However on Thursday only 36% travelled by car which maybe suggest that on Thursday there were more local people in Pickering but if you look at my results they show that on Wednesday there were more local people in Pickering.
Diagram D
Table D
Travelling time Wednesday Thursday
Less than 15 minutes 48% 42%
15 minutes- 1 hour 31% 36%
More than 1 hour 21% 22%
On both days it took more people less than 15 minutes to travel into Pickering.
The majority of people took less than 15 minutes to travel to Pickering. This is mainly because most of the interviewees were from Pickering and the area around Pickering. This is surprising as Pickering is a tourist town and most of the people we asked were either from Pickering or the area around Pickering and were not actually tourists.
My fifth hypothesis is that with the travelling time I can say that a majority of people questioned on both days were from Pickering as it took them less time to travel into Pickering. I can back this up with the results from Table D and Diagram D which both say that the people questioned took 15 minutes or less to travel into Pickering.
We also asked people whether they did most o their shopping in Pickering. Our results were;
Diagram E
These results show that most of the interviewees didn’t do most of their shopping in Pickering. This isn’t surprising as Pickering doesn’t have a major shopping store or any big name stores. So the local people will have to travel out of Pickering to buy all of the luxury items. But the shops that Pickering has are selling the basic goods.
With these results they show that a majority of people on both days do their shopping outside of Pickering.
Table E
Do you do most of your shopping in Pickering? Wednesday Thursday
Yes 33% 44%
No 67% 56%
These results show that most of the interviewees didn’t do most of their shopping in Pickering. This isn’t surprising as Pickering doesn’t have a major shopping store or any big name stores. So the local people will have to travel out of Pickering to buy all of the luxury items. But the shops that Pickering has are selling the basic goods.
With these results they show that a majority of people on both days do their shopping outside of Pickering.
My sixth hypothesis is that I can say that the people questioned would rather do their shopping outside of Pickering and I can establish this with Table E and Diagram E with both of these showing that people prefer shopping outside of Pickering. Along with only 33% on Wednesday and 44% on Thursday saying they do most of their shopping in Pickering.
Table F
Is this your first visit to Pickering? Wednesday Thursday
Yes 12% 33%
No 88% 67%
Diagram F
Most of the interviewees said that this wasn’t their first visit to Pickering. I think with this question we should have asked if they were a tourist or not. That way we would have had a better idea of who were tourists and who were local to the area this way we would have had different results from the people we interviewed. With a lot of people saying that it wasn’t their first visit to Pickering shows that if they were tourists then they enjoyed visiting Pickering and they decided to travel there again.
For my seventh hypothesis I can say that people the people questioned had visited Pickering before and as a consequence of this they visited Pickering again. I can prove this with my Table F and Diagram F. Table F shows that on both days a majority of people had visited Pickering before. However there were a small number of people who hadn’t visited Pickering before. I think that if people said that it was their first visit to Pickering then we should have asked them if they enjoyed their time in Pickering and if they would visit the area again.
Diagram G
Table G
Would you visit Pickering again? Wednesday Thursday
Yes 96.5% 82%
No 3.5% 18%
With these sets of results they show that a lot of the people questioned said that they would visit Pickering again. That shows that Pickering is a pleasant place and is a delightful experience. It seems that on Thursday there were more people that wouldn’t visit Pickering so maybe the people on Thursday thought that Pickering wasn’t an enjoyable place to visit. Whereas Wednesday’s results prove that people visiting Pickering was satisfied with the area.
My eighth hypothesis is that I’m able to say that given the chance people would visit Pickering again. I can provide evidence to this with Table G and Diagram G which both say that the majority of people enjoyed their visit to Pickering and would take another trip to the town of Pickering
A semi-conclusion would be that a majority of people on both days was fond of Pickering and many of the interviewees had visited Pickering before our visit there and would gladly visit again. Although, there isn’t a large shopping centre nearby to attract the tourists or for the locals to do their shopping, people still flock to Pickering for the market on Wednesdays and the steam railway. A lot of people who had travelled to Pickering didn’t travel for a lengthy amount of time which suggests that a lot of people who were visiting Pickering were from nearby and didn’t have to travel very far.
Recently I took a trip with a few of my class-mates to Beverley and asked people there the same questionnaire with a few alterations. We did that so that we could compare the results from Pickering to those of Beverley.
We found that a majority of people asked were from the area around Beverley unlike that of people asked in Pickering as most of them were from Pickering itself. Unlike the Pickering survey, were over half the people asked didn’t do their shopping in Pickering. The Beverley survey recorded that half of the people in question did their shopping in Beverley.
We asked if people would visit the designated town again given the choice and in Pickering there was a few people who said no but in Beverley everybody in question would visit Beverley again.
To conclude my study I can say that the reason people are specifically attracted to Pickering is that most people are interested in the steam railway or the market which are both located in Pickering. Where as, in Beverley people were attracted to visiting Beverley because they were visiting or have visited Beverley Minster.
A few ways in which I could have improved my study is that I could have included a plan of the shops and businesses of Pickering. Also, I could have written about the shops and businesses and say if they were high, medium or low order businesses. I could have also asked more people the questionnaire which would have made a difference to my results. Also I could have visited Pickering or Beverley on multiple days and then compared the results to see what differences there would be and I could compare each day with one another.