After another day of hard work and creative thinking in lessons, students headed out for an active afternoon in Oxford. Some students opted to scour the streets of the city in search of the biggest thing they could find for £1, museum artefacts from their home countries, and the oldest coin, as they competed against other teams in a scavenger hunt. Congratulations to the Mad Pies for their ingenuity and resourcefulness―they stormed to victory, having hit all 22 targets!

Others chose to take their visit at a more stately pace, and spent the afternoon wandering the long galleries of the Ashmolean Museum. They pointed their scavenging counterparts in the right direction when they came rushing through, then returning to contented contemplation of Turner’s drawings.

Still others left dry land altogether and took to the waterways of Oxford on that most unassuming vessel, the punt. Students were thrilled as Dr Manrutt Wongkaew (or Manny as now we know him), the Fashion and Textile Design teacher, graced one of the punts with his formidable presence―and his very appropriate duck-adorned punting cap. There were some collisions with trees, but happily none between boats; there was a hairy moment when a pole got stuck in a muddy patch on the river’s floor, but Counsellor Joe was handy enough to manoeuvre it, and the punt under his captaincy, to freedom. A shoutout is in order to Oscar, who decided to give punting a go for the first time, and ended up manning the pole of his punt for the entire trip.

Back in St Hugh’s, safe and dry, students enjoyed the visit of some furry new friends (and one cingulate), which were brought to the college by the aptly-named Animal Man. Available for viewing, stroking and photographing were a meerkat, an armadillo, and quite a sleepy skunk―and it wasn’t the only one, as most students headed for the hay even before curfew, with muscles and minds nicely exercised by the day’s activities.