Nethercott Chalet Fund report –Daniel Erasmus (2024, MSc Law and Finance)

From 7 to 17 July, I joined University College’s first Chalet reading party for the 2025 season. The time was a highlight, if not the highlight, of my first year of postgraduate study at the university. There has been no other experience at the university where I found myself entirely present with the surrounds and the people that I shared a space with. The Chalet demands an intentionality whereby, even with cellular service and charged portable power supplies, we opted to leave our devices to the side, to read, to walk, and to sit with one another. We share some similarities across the 13-person group (of course we were all Univ members), but many of us had not met, nor spent such intimate time together. As a postgraduate student, this was made the experience particularly unique as it provided a window into the mind and life of the undergraduate student.

It is doubtless that the day-to-day of a Jack Matthews’ party is by now well recorded in many reports of this kind; however, its indispensability to the nature of the experience necessitates that I record it too. The general flow of the 10-day period entailed alternating reading and hiking days, supported by a carefully designed roster for cooking and various other essential tasks (e.g. the (toilet) burn). We ate breakfast at 8am (often accompanied by croissants from the patisserie, which I ensured to facilitate as much as was physically feasible), commenced with our read (or hike) at 9am, and had lunch at 1pm if reading or when reaching at appropriately scenic spot if hiking. Dinner was always a moment of true community, and punctuality was rightly sacrosanct (as I came to learn upon my late arrival from a solo trail run that saw some unplanned route deviations…). We laughed, bonded, debated, and sat in joy at these dinners. When it was our turn to cook, we all worked hard to honour the day and each other with a meal that was adequately novel and delightful.

As an overly enthusiastic runner and lover of endurance movement, I truly appreciated the hikes. Unlike much of the running I had done over the preceding year, our hikes were an opportunity to go slow and forge bonds with many who do not spend every weekend running for hours on end. The final, near 12-hour hike to and across the Tête Rousse Glacier was perhaps the most significant of these moments (eight of us, despite some individual fears and apprehensions, headed out at the early hour of 6.30am). We went slow, long, and gently together, never leaving a single person behind, in spirit or physical condition. Unfortunately, we were about two hours late for dinner, and Jack Matthews (or JJM as we affectionately called him) ensured the Tête Rousse crew were placed on washing up duty. We did not mind, of course: we were running on the delirium of 24km hiking, enduring 2000+ metres of elevation gain, and had just been treated to a 7-course meal (a necessary and welcomed intervention to deplete the remaining food  supplies) by Jack and Becca (a Univ Old Member who joined us for the final five days of the party).

The reading party was nothing short of fantastic. I hope I will be lucky enough to join again in 2026.

Published: 7 November 2025

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