Glacial Landscapes in the UKMemory Aid
CATCH A DRUM — The Complete Glacial Landforms Mnemonic
This memory aid covers CATCH A DRUM — The Complete Glacial Landforms Mnemonic within Glacial Landforms for GCSE Geography. Revise Glacial Landforms in Glacial Landscapes in the UK for GCSE Geography with 17 exam-style questions and 20 flashcards. This topic appears regularly enough that it should still be part of a steady revision cycle. It is section 13 of 16 in this topic. Use it for quick recall, then test yourself straight afterwards so the memory aid becomes usable in an answer.
Topic position
Section 13 of 16
Practice
17 questions
Recall
20 flashcards
🧠 CATCH A DRUM — The Complete Glacial Landforms Mnemonic
Learn all the main glacial landforms in one mnemonic: CATCH A DRUM. The first five letters cover erosional upland features; the last five cover depositional features.
C — Corries (cirques/cwms) — armchair-shaped hollows formed by rotational flow + plucking + abrasion. Usually contain a tarn (corrie lake). North/northeast-facing in UK. Red Tarn (Helvellyn) and Glaslyn (Snowdon) are your named examples.
A — Arêtes — knife-edge ridges between two corries eroding from opposite sides. Striding Edge, Helvellyn = your named UK arête.
T — Truncated spurs — cliff-like triangular rock faces where glacier cut off interlocking spurs. Found on the sides of U-shaped valleys (e.g. Nant Ffrancon, Snowdonia).
C — Corrie lakes / Tarns fill the over-deepened hollow — when the glacier retreats, the rock lip retains meltwater. This also acts as a reminder that corries lead to tarns.
H — Hanging valleys — tributaries left hanging above the main U-valley floor because smaller glaciers eroded less deeply. Marked by waterfalls (e.g. Pistyll Rhaeadr, 73 m, Wales).
A — sAndar / Alluvial outwash — sorted, stratified fluvioglacial sediment deposited by meltwater rivers beyond the glacier snout. Flat, braided rivers, grades from coarse to fine.
D — Drumlins — smooth oval hills of till, stoss end upstream. Tell you the direction of past ice flow. Eden Valley, Cumbria = UK drumlin field. "Blunt end faces the attacker."
R — Ribbon lakes — long, narrow lakes in over-deepened glacial troughs. Often moraine-dammed at one end. Windermere (17 km, longest lake in England) is your named example.
U — U-shaped valleys (glacial troughs) — the master erosional landform. Flat floor, steep sides, misfit stream on the floor. Nant Ffrancon (Snowdonia) and Langdale (Lake District) are your named examples.
M — Moraines (and pyramidal peaks) — moraines are ridges of till marking retreat stages: lateral (valley sides), medial (centre), terminal (maximum extent). M also reminds you of the Matterhorn = pyramidal peak (3+ corries eroding one peak). Snowdon = UK pyramidal peak equivalent.
Additional memory tricks:
- Till vs outwash: "Till is UNsorted like a builder's skip — everything dumped together. Outwash is SORTED like supermarket shelves — like sizes together."
- Corrie → arête → pyramidal peak: "One glacier digs a bowl. Two glaciers carve a blade. Three glaciers make a crown."
- Kettle holes: "A kettle hole forms where dead ice melts — the ground kettles (sinks) into the gap left by the vanishing ice."
- Eskers: "An esker is a river's fossil — the sediment a subglacial river left behind when the ice melted and its tunnel walls dissolved."