Hidden City London

When Jessica was here last year, I wanted her to meet some of our London friends.

So when one of them suggested a London scavenger hunt we were thrilled.

It was a great way for Jess to see more of London and to have a great time getting to know everyone.

We had so much fun that we signed up for Round Two!

Hidden City has created cryptic trails across five UK cities

(London, Manchester, Newcastle, York and Brighton).

Most of the trails run all year long and they often have limited edition seasonal hunts.

So on the Saturday after Christmas we signed up for Scrooge's Cryptic Christmas Trail.

 

We signed up two teams.  Guys versus Gals.

The guys had won the first time and we wanted a rematch to redeem ourselves.

Our team consisted of these lovelies, Sarah, Gina and Mandy.

Here's how the hunt works.  Simple really.

Register your team or teams online (£16 per team).

Each team captain will receive a Welcome text and an email with all of the details.

Meet up at the allotted time and place.  Everything else is done via text.

One of the team captains texts "Start" and the race is on! 

You receive a text with a clue and you have to figure out where to go.

It could be a shop, a pub, a museum, anywhere within walking distance.

Then you have to find a certain feature once you are there.

Text your answer back and if you're right,

you get your next clue and you are on your way.

Each trail varies and could have  8 to 22 clues.

If you get stumped, don't worry.  You get one free "lifeline" and after that you can request hints.

But it will cost you a 10 minute time penalty.

Once we got going we registered all of our cell phones.  So we each got the clue.

Which was helpful because I had to keep putting on my granny glasses to read the text.

Granny glass are great for reading small print, but not when you're racing through the streets of London.

Even with little knowledge of the city, you should be able to figure out all of the clues.

They recommend that you bring along your A-Z Street Guide,

but we just Google Mapped our way around.

Just make sure that you don't get turned around like we did.

There might have been some backtracking.

And it was hard not to get sidetracked along the way.  Cupcakes!

There are several optional breaks along the way.  The clock stops and you can grab a pint.

You would think that our two teams would have met up along the way.

We met up with the guys a few times, but didn't really see them much.

When we did, there was quite a bit of trash talking going on!

It's a fabulous and fun way to explore a city.

The hunt took us through so many nooks and crannies that we never knew about.

We were racing through because of the competition, but this would be such a great date night.

A couple could just explore together and go a little slower.

(I'm thinking the  Cupid's Conundrum would be a great Valentine's Day outing.  Hint, hint.)

There's so many wonderful things to see along the way.

We ran all over the city. We were determined to beat these guys.

Especially with their taunting pics enjoying a pint while we were obviously still way behind.

 We skipped our break and carried on with the race.
We were hoping the pints might slow them down a bit so we'd have a chance.

This was a pretty long hunt and we were wearing down at the end.
With some relief, we got to the last stop.  Thankfully, it was a pub.

Seriously?  What took us 2.5 hours only took them 1.5 hours.

They spent most of their time enjoying the pubs while we raced around to keep up.

I might have pouted. I hate losing.
(I won't mention again they they are all really tall and take one step for our two.)

After a hearty pub dinner recapping our adventure, I felt much better.

And ready to sign up for another one.

I highly recommend this outing.  I had a blast and would love to try one of the other cities.
You can find Hidden City on Twitter @intheHiddenCity.


Are you ready to follow a trail of clues?

 

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  *We received a complimentary hunt from Hidden City for the purposes of review.
All photos, writing and opinions are my own.
As always, I promise to be open, honest and transparent with my readers.
If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask.

 You can find this review and many others in my
London Attraction Guide.