Sea, Salmon, and Sword-fights: The 2026 Downing Chapel Choir Tour
The Downing College Chapel Choir have recently returned from another successful summer tour – This year's destination, Portugal. Louisa Denby, Director of Music, looks back on an exciting few days of music and memories.
The first excitement of the Tour occurred at Gatwick Airport, thanks to somebody knocking a lamppost over, which fell across the road, blocking all traffic to the North Terminal. Luckily we were Southbound and escaped the chaos, but a number of parents/other departing dropper-offer-ers didn’t…
Having arrived in Lisbon, we noted how cool it was in comparison to the UK, and joyfully embarked upon our first journey by Metro. This joy was short-lived, however, when we swiftly realised we had somehow lost half the Choir. With our numbers eventually restored, and hotel check-in complete, there began a heated debate as to whether food or football should be deserving of the higher priority. The net result was another half-Choir split, with a number of people going off in search of the Lisbon ‘FanZone’, and the other half seeking nourishment nearby.
The next day we were up at a civilised time to sing the Eucharist service at St George’s Anglican Church. We were grateful for the warm welcome by the Chaplain, who was evidently an avid Life of Brian fan. Following an afternoon of sightseeing, we made our way along the coast to the scenic town of Estoril to sing Evensong at the other Anglican Church. The Organ Scholar was slightly perturbed by the fits of giggles into which the tenors dissolved at the start of the rehearsal, and didn’t quite know how to respond to the Director of Music’s request for clarification as to whether he would like the organ to sound either ‘quite like a video game’ or ‘a lot like a video game’ … but order was eventually restored, and we enjoyed singing canticles by Charles Wood, exactly one hundred years to the day since his death. After the service we found a beach: some of us swam in the sea, and we all eventually sat and watched the sun go down. It was a lovely end to a busy day.
Lisbon Cathedral was our destiny on Monday, and gifted us one of the funniest moments of the Tour. One of the basses had a serious argument with a rack of coat hangers on wheels and ended up flying all the way down the cathedral cloisters, as one with the rack. This was about thirty seconds before we were due to perform, but with the entire Choir howling with laughter, we had to delay our entrance by a minute or two (no basses were harmed in the making of this anecdote).
After the concert we decided to get a tram back to the hostel, but it didn't arrive when it said it would. After much deliberation, we were on the verge of booking Ubers when the vision in yellow suddenly came trundling around the corner and was greeted by enthusiastic cheers, much to the consternation of others in the vicinity.
Tuesday was a slow start, in part as a result of the enthusiasm with which late-night karaoke had been engaged, but eventually everyone made it to Sintra, where we visited the Royal Palace and other sights. Following a group meal at a nearby restaurant, we convened on the rooftop terrace of our accommodation and enjoyed the views across the city while waiting for the tenors to figure out how to watch the football on someone’s laptop.
The next day we were up early to board a bus to Coímbra. There was a Love Actually moment (think Rowan Atkinson) in a coffee shop moments before departure, which threatened to derail our carefully laid plans, but the whole Choir somehow made it to the bus on time. Sightseeing ensued once we had checked in to our accommodation, and thence came the most bizarre moment of the Tour: the finding of what was unmistakably a Downing pendant in a charity shop! The World Cup once more dominated the evening, with a comparison of FanZones soon underway, before the occurrence of ‘Sushi-gate’, the wisdom of which was called into question at four o’clock the following morning…
On Thursday we had the enormous privilege of singing a Mass in the Chapel of the Apparitions in the Sanctuary of Fátima; this was apparently the exact spot where the Virgin Mary is supposed to have appeared to the three shepherd boys. It was a classic 'visiting choir' service: the priest had clearly not been briefed on which bits we were going to sing (despite the precision they demanded from us before we arrived); the Organ Scholar forgot his music for the voluntary and so had to read it off someone's phone; and the security guard was chased by a bee during the Homily, which provided considerable entertainment for the Choir.
Friday was another slow morning, as most of the Choir had been sampling Coímbra’s party scene until the early hours. Some found a river beach and enjoyed chill-out time, while others explored the old town. After a group meal all together, we discovered a Medieval Fayre in full swing, complete with Medieval games which the boys entered into with gusto, while the girls engaged in sword-fighting, following the example of the Director of Music.
Saturday saw us make the journey to Porto and split into groups to explore the city before convening at the Lapa Church to sing a concert. The church was extremely beautiful, and houses the biggest organ in Porto – considered the organ builder's 'masterpiece' – upon which a few of us enjoyed making a racket for a short while after the performance.
Sunday was our final musical outing: a lunchtime concert at Clérigos Church, which attracted a very large audience. Afterwards the Choir exploded into an impromptu a capella version of Pitch Perfect in the Sacristy, and were promptly told to desist by the church’s Organist, who treated us to a very realistic and mildly terrifying impression of the Terminator. Meanwhile, the Director of Music managed to acquire 15 free tickets for the Clérigos Tower, which is 76m high and has amazing views over the city.
A certain football match occupied most of our evening, before last-minute port procurement and souvenir shopping took place on Monday morning. The most stressful moments of the Tour happened at the metro station on the way to the airport, with the breaking of two of the ticket machines, failure of station staff to contribute anything remotely constructive or helpful to the situation, and the subsequent missing of the train by four of us, followed by a 90-minute delay before the plane took off. But we eventually landed safely back in the UK, to a new Prime Minister and even warmer weather.
Published 17 August 2026