The next travelling adventure of the Choir of Clare College saw the young singers venture out across the pond yet again. After all their years of California dreamin', their time had finally come to embrace the West Coast of the USA—bringing with them a beautiful programme of music, "O Magnum Mysterium", inspired by various settings of the eponymous Christmas text.

The tour started off with a concert in the Welsh town of Hay-on-Wye, often described as a "town of books"—very fitting for a cohort of Cambridge students, we thought!

Various coach, train and plane journeys later, the Choir set foot in the picturesque LA neighbourhood of Pacific Palisades, the location of their first concert in the USA. The tour then pulled the Choir up, down and around The Golden State. They visited Central LA and La Jolla, before travelling down to Palm Desert and then right back up to Oakland and San Francisco for the final stage of the tour.

There was a plethora of highlights: burying the Director of Music in the sand at Santa Monica Pier; seeing the Hollywood sign from the (not-so-)supreme vantage point of a far-away coach and getting disproportionately excited; buying the largest box of Goldfish Crackers in existence; reclaiming our coach's late arrival as an opportunity for an impromptu choir football practice session—using the finest Palm Desert grapefruits as balls; seeing the Golden Gate Bridge from the (truly) supreme up-close-and-personal perspective; and, of course, Alex Carter's goose honk in The Twelve Days of Christmas.

The music never deigned to drop below a superbly fine standard, led by the Choir's wonderful conductor Graham Ross. The concert programme included various Christmas carols, including Rutter's Shepherd's Pipe Carol, Tavener's Nowell! Nowell! Out of Your Sleep and Poulenc's O Magnum Mysterium.