A Potters Bar school took rugby-playing pupils on the trip of a lifetime to South Africa.

Lochinver House School, in Heath Road, took 35 boys between the ages of 11 and 13 on the two-week tour over the Easter holidays.

It was the school’s fourth tour of South Africa.

The boys each played in five rugby matches across the country. The highlight was playing a development side from Langa Township, just outside Cape Town, with Table Mountain looming in the background.

After the game, the group hosted a meal for their opponents and donated funds and equipment the boys and their parents had raised for the township.

The boys also stayed in Durban and Johannesburg, spent a day and night in a Zulu village and watched a Super Rugby match at the Kings Park Stadium. They ended the tour with a dinner at the Sun City Resort.

During the tour, the boys also went on four game drives and attempted to see all of the ‘big five’ game animals in one day – lions, elephants, buffalo, leopards and rhinos.

The group spent the last day in South Africa in Gold Reef City, where they visited both the tallest rollercoaster in Africa and descended into the depths of a gold mine.

Head of history and head of Year 5, John Fairclough, who accompanied the tour, said pupils had returned home with “golden memories of the trip of a lifetime”.