Psychogeography, or just walking the dog?

With so few boarders around at present, this evening's mild weather was a perfect excuse for a bit of a stroll with Maggie, the Fox house dog and a few volunteer expedition members. Here we see them testing a borrowed umbrella that later served as a parachute for getting off the city walls. It never actually rained...

We made our way around the city, using the moats and little-known sections of the inner ramparts to keep away from roads. At Fishergate bar, the team got to interrogate a friendly member of the police, who had been drawn to us because of the unusual jackets! He soon realised his error, and was last seen taking cover behind Dick Turpin's tomb-stone, rather than take any more penetrating questions on powers of arrest, police salaries or what he had enjoyed for lunch that day...

Astronomy Camp

On the first night of the Easter holidays, a select group of lower schoolroom day students became temporary boarders for a night in Fox, so that they could make the most of the observatory.


The evening started with a very fine fish and chip supper, eaten with clandestine glee in the staffroom.

After this, we moved to a teaching lab, where the group asked some excellent questions and learned a fair bit about practical stargazing. By 9pm, the sky was clear enough to move up to the observatory, where we warmed up on lunar craters and Mars. Just before bedtime, Saturn sailed up into a clear part of the eastern sky and we were able to zoom in on that never-to-be-forgotten first sight of the rings.

After that, everyone retired to the Fox house kitchen for cocoa, teeth cleaning and a long night of telling each other scary stories by torchlight...