Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Trivia: Bristol students build 25ft snow sphinx

This Is Bristol

For anyone not resident or a frequent visitor to the UK the following brief story may need a little context. We had snow in the UK on a scale that has not been experienced in over 18 years, so it has been something of a novelty (as well as a major nuisance from a logistical point of view, because we are simply not accustomed to dealing with high volume snowfall in the UK). The other point that may need clarifying is that Comic Relief is an annual charity event which raises money for projects both in the UK and overseas.

If you go down to the Bristol Downs today you are in for a big surprise – a 15ft high sphinx made out of snow.

The structure, which is about 25ft long, was built by a group of University of Bristol students to raise money for Comic Relief.

Ashley Coates, 19, of Leigh Woods, began building the snow sculpture on Friday with four pals.

Over the next three days they worked on it for 14 hours, and were expecting to finish it on Monday.

Ashley, formerly of Clifton College and currently on a gap year, said: "When the snow came down heavily we decided we had got to do something, so decided on a sphinx.
Click here!

"We put floodlights up so we could see it.

"I think it's been worth the effort, we've put out a red box and have started collecting money for Comic Relief.

"We got £20 in the first hour."

There's a photograph on the above page but it's not very good. If anyone is in touch with the Bristol University students who built the giant snow-sphinx please ask them to send me a better photo of it to post. It looks like great fun.

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