Seven hundred schoolgirls all dressed in purple descended on Hampstead Heath on Friday for a six-mile sponsored walk to help build a school in Senegal.

Accompanied by their teachers, the South Hampstead High School pupils completed the trek as part of the school’s Purple Pledge fundraising programme that has so far raised more than £13,300 for the Dakar school.

Students embraced a challenge by teachers to wear something purple on the walk, with one pupil even sporting a Ribena carton costume.

The youngest pupils also took part, but rather than face the gruelling six-mile challenge, the five and six-year-olds walked for one mile from Parliament Hill to their school in Netherhall Gardens.

Julie Dark, the school’s director of marketing and communications, said: “Everybody was really loving it.”