Cambridge IELTS 21 Academic Listening Test 2 (Online Test)

Here is some information about history and nature walks in the region. They can be completed in less than a day and also be combined with a visit to Melby, a former coal mine now open to the public.

The Marsden Coastal Walk is suitable for all the family as there are no strenuous climbs. The route begins at Marsden harbour, where there are hourly ferries to and from the beautiful Hooker Island, a great place for fishing. The walk covers part of the coastal path trail. As there are clear signposts all along the way, you don't even need to take a map with you. At one point, the route goes inland slightly and passes a castle built in the 1400s near to a now-vanished market town. The castle's now just a pile of stones but it's a great place to take photos, and fascinating information boards show what it once looked like. If you set off early, you can be back in time for midday.

The Melby Heritage Walk is a great place to take photos, especially of the night sky. At certain times of the year, people come here from far and wide. They climb to the top of the valley and take pictures of the stars. In the daytime, it's completely different. As you hike through the dense woods in the valley bottom, the only things you'll hear are the sound of your own footsteps. At the highest point, you can stop to take in the views, and those with lots of energy can climb the tower that's situated where there was once a seventeenth century hunting lodge. The route continues along the tops of the hills and brings you back down to the starting point - the car park at Melby Coal Mine.

Melby Coal Mine has been open to the public for twenty years and has won awards for its visitor experience. Many of the buildings around the mine are still standing and have been converted into display areas.

Firstly, there's an exhibition showing the history of the mine, with many original black and white photos. To see that, you go from the car park, via a covered walkway to the Main Visitor Centre. Go through the ticket office to an area where there are lockers to leave heavy bags in, and where you can borrow raincoats. Beyond that room is the exhibition.

There's a small bathhouse where miners used to wash after their shift underground. You can see that in the building directly to the north of the engine house. The boiler has gone from there now, but there are lines of tin baths on the stone floor.

There's a display of early mining tools from the days before mechanisation. You can find that in a small L-shaped building in the middle of the northern boundary of the site. It's incredible to think how miners were able to use hand implements to cut through rock.

The vehicle shed, where you can find wagons of different sizes, along with some of the hi-tech cutting machines that were in use until the mine closed, is in the southwest corner of the site, and can be accessed via a covered walkway.

There is a field with ponies, which are always popular with children, on the north-eastern boundary of the site, not approached via a covered walkway.

The other building to mention is the education centre. This is where school groups go when they visit the mine, but it's also accessible to the public as it contains a library and small gift shop. The centre is connected to the ticket office via a short section of covered walkway.

TUTOR: Thanks for coming along, Nadia and Fergus. So this is a chance for you to give us some feedback about different aspects of your course. What would you like to begin with?

NADIA: I've enjoyed the sessions on food safety. There was some information there that I found really surprising, although some was stuff I knew already, like the rise in rates of obesity.

FERGUS: Yeah, that's been in the news a lot. But I hadn't realised that unsafe food causes more than 200 different diseases.

NADIA: No, I'd no idea it was that many. And speaking of diseases, I knew resistance to antibiotics is on the increase, but I didn't know why ...

FERGUS: ...that it's partly because when animals are treated with antibiotics then consumed by humans, the antibiotics get into the food chain. I had no idea about that either.

NADIA: Then the sessions provided a lot of information about plastic pollution from food packaging in the ocean, but I think that most of us were already aware of that.

FERGUS: Yeah. But I thought we could have done more on how much food is thrown away unnecessarily through fear of it being out of date, that was only mentioned in passing.

TUTOR: OK, I'll bear that in mind. What did you think about the sessions from visiting lecturers, Fergus?

FERGUS: For me the most interesting one was about that project to prevent companies giving incorrect information to consumers about food.

TUTOR: Ah, food fraud, yes.

FERGUS: I thought it was really good to address a problem that's faced by so many different groups - people with special religious rules, as well as vegetarians and vegans.

NADIA: And those with allergies.

FERGUS: Yeah. And another thing, we've had effective ways of analysing DNA for some time now and these can easily be applied to analysing food. But what the researchers succeeded in doing was to ensure that these tests were carried out at different stages in the food's journey from the producer to the consumer. So they knew that the food actually came from the place it was supposed to, and had the ingredients it was meant to.

NADIA: Exactly. So customers can be confident about what they buy.

FERGUS: And the researchers had a good system for publicising their findings too.

NADIA: Well, I thought there were some problems with that, actually.

TUTOR: OK. And do you have any recommendations for new topics that we could include in the course?

NADIA: Well, I'm interested in how crop yields can be increased without damaging the environment.

FERGUS: But we've already done quite a bit on that - but not so much on the seafood industry, where stocks are in danger of being overexploited as a food source unless we can find ways of keeping stocks up.

NADIA: Yes, that'd be a good topic. And I'm interested in the idea of a personalised approach to diet, now we have the technology to analyse exactly what individuals need.

FERGUS: That sounds more like a medical topic than food science.

NADIA: OK. What about sessions on the variety of food and eating habits around the world? That's very relevant nowadays.

FERGUS: Yes, I think the whole class would be interested in that.

NADIA: Then there's technological stuff, things like 3D printing of food and smart packaging.

FERGUS: Mmm - maybe too specialist.

TUTOR: Now, I'm particularly interested in your project - the one where you developed a new food product. So talk me through the stages... first you had to decide on your initial aim.

FERGUS: We decided we wanted to create something people could eat on the go rather than in a restaurant.

NADIA: Yeah so we chose falafel, which was originally a Middle Eastern snack.

FERGUS: We made up our minds about that pretty quickly. I know some students found it a lot harder to choose, and wasted a lot of time.

NADIA: Then we had to do the literature review. We hadn't done one of these before so, the handout with advice for the project was very useful here.

FERGUS: Yes, especially the advice on how to present the information. Then product development, actually deciding what we'd use to make the falafel, and for me the interesting thing about that was that we wanted it to be something a bit different from an ordinary falafel.

NADIA: We really made the right choice when we finally decided to use jackfruit, even though it wasn't something that either of us had ever tasted before.

FERGUS: Yeah, like the name tells you, it's a fruit but actually it's really good in savoury dishes. The product production, working out how to make the falafel, was harder than I expected because I'd never made them before.

NADIA: It was mostly trial and error. We started off with the basic recipe and then experimented and when it went wrong...

FERGUS: ...which it did a lot of the time...

NADIA: ...we just moved on and kept adapting it and in the end it turned out fine and we had a lot of fun.

FERGUS: We did!

TUTOR: Thank you. Well, your project was a very good ....

For my presentation today I'm going to talk about some of the issues facing the cruise ship industry and then some ways these can be addressed. The cruise ship industry has partly been responsible for the effects of overtourism in recent decades. Overtourism occurs in places where excessive numbers of tourists cause significant problems. Pollution, for example, is among the greatest threats to many popular tourist destinations.

Of course, for many places it's a difficult balance to achieve. They want to promote their city or island as a desirable tourist destination, but at the same time, are unable to cope with thousands of cruise ship passengers on a daily basis. The trouble is, excessive tourism is destroying the beauty spots and places of interest that people come to visit. Several cities, such as Barcelona, have responded by imposing a tax which all visitors to the city from cruise ships have to pay. But as it's only a couple of euros, many green campaigners think it won't deter enough people to make any difference.

Bruges is another city which became impossible to navigate at times because of the huge numbers of cruise passengers arriving on day trips from the port of Zeebrugge. The city was becoming like a 'theme park', with shops only catering for tourists, selling chocolate, which Belgium is famous for, and other souvenirs. The local council took action to limit cruise passengers to a more manageable level.

Dubrovnik had to limit the numbers of cruise ships after it became extremely popular as a cruise ship destination when it featured in a hugely successful TV series. What it does now is control the timing of all cruise ship entries to the city's port. However, many people feel this measure does not go far enough.

Cruise ships may be unpopular in some of their destinations but they also have an image problem. They've always been perceived as a safe holiday for the elderly, with not much on offer for families or young couples. A recent survey showed that cost is also a major factor in putting younger groups off going on a cruise. But what they don't realise is that compared to other types of package holidays, cruises can actually be good value, as all activities and drinks are often included. And another perception is that cruises have lots of rules about what to wear and how to behave. But these days, most cruises are no longer very formal and behind the times.

So what solutions are there for cruise lines to overcome some of these problems? How can they appeal to younger customers? Well one selling point is that cruise ships are becoming more sustainable. New ships are built with hybrid engines with large batteries which means ships do not have to keep their engines running while docked.

Cruise lines are also designing ships specially for those in the age range of 21 to 45. The décor in these feels contemporary and there are a range of activities on board that you wouldn't find on a more traditional cruise. There's even a boxing ring on one ship, and most offer diving expeditions. But there's also a huge focus on well-being with a variety of sessions of different kinds.

Food is always a very important part of any cruise and cruise ships have had to radically update their menus to suit the tastes of their younger customers. Vegan dishes are standard, for example. The restaurants on board have also gone paperless with menus available on screen.

Unlike older generations who went on cruises largely to get away from everything, younger people expect to be able to keep in touch with friends and family. Many people going on longer cruises also spend time working, so companies have to guarantee wifi that can be relied upon at all times.

My grandparents used to love looking through cruise brochures, even when they weren't planning on going on a cruise. Until very recently TV ads for cruises always felt dated and aimed at retirees. Cruise lines have been slow to adopt the power of social media but that's all changing. Leading cruise lines now employ top agencies to produce first rate videos for social media channels.

It will be interesting to see whether ...