Breakfast was cooked to order and very tasty, although it was a little odd that we had two rounds of toast for three people. When we had finished the two pieces we asked for a bit more. After breakfast we set off towards Christ Church College and walked through the memorial garden and water meadows before joining the queue to enter the college. I say joining the queue, in fact there were only two people in front of us but by the time the doors opened, ten minutes late there was a large queue behind us.

We enjoyed the college and the Cathedral, where in the shop I found the Pitkin Guide to Oxford. It shows the best of Oxford via two walking tours. As luck would have it we were part way through the route of one of them. We carried on along the route to the science museum and stopped for a brief visit before carrying on past the Bodleian Library to a nearby pub for lunch. The pub was a bit chaotic but we managed to find ourselves a quiet corner to sit.

After lunch we returned to the Bodleian Library but opted out from rushing to join the last tour of the day. We visited the library hall, with the intention to return the library for a tour the following day. We then carried on along the walking route passing under ‘The Bridge of Sighs’, which is so named due to the apparent resemblance to its Venetian namesake. Just past the bridge we took a slight detour down a narrow alley to find The Turf Tavern where allegedly Bill Clinton imbibed in some ‘pot’. We then continued along the walking route passing many historic buildings, stopping off in a Viennese cake shop to indulge in tea and cake…

We then made our way back to the hotel to freshen up before our evening meal in The Quod Brasserie. On our walk to the brasserie it was lovely to see young ladies in long dresses and young gentlemen in suits and ties queuing up for a function in the college. After dinner we returned to the hotel for a nightcap before retiring to bed.

Thousands of pieces of debris are orbiting the Earth, travelling at over 27,000 km/h.1 This space junk can collide with and destroy essential satellites, knocking out communications – and in turn creating even more junk. As the layer of junk gets thicker, it’s becoming more dangerous to launch satellites and send astronauts into space. Our lifestyle depends on satellites in orbit, but space junk poses a real danger.

Space junk includes old dead satellites, fuel tanks, everyday rubbish from past space stations, lost tools from spacewalks, and even astronauts’ gloves, along with natural debris from space. Junk can range in size from dust to very tiny fragments (called ‘bullets’) to full-size satellites (‘cars’).

Low Earth orbit is 500 km above the Earth’s surface. This is where most of the junk is, and is also the region where we have had most manned spacecraft and many scientific satellites.

Middle Earth orbit is about 2000 km above the Earth’s surface. This is where you find the GPS system of satellites, orbiting twice a day.

Geostationary orbit is 36,000 km above Earth. Satellites here stay above a fixed point on the Earth and are usually for communications, television signals and monitoring the weather. They orbit once a day.