“In the end, it was a case of heading off to the woods at 4am with a shovel,”
muses Andy Darley, who found himself digging for treasure in Wakerley Great
Wood, Northamptonshire, in February last year. “I went twice on Friday and
did some digging. Saturday I had a thumping migraine; and Sunday afternoon I
found it.”
“It” was the Receda Cube, a metal box sought by 50,000 players of an
alternative-reality-game-cum-treasure-hunt called Perplex City, which ran
from 2005 until Darley found the cube, which he was able to cash in for a
£100,000 prize.
Tomorrow, parents all over the UK will watch their children scuttle over lawns
to collect brightly coloured plastic eggs filled with little toys or sweets,
marvelling at their offspring's capacity for hunting, gathering and greed.
While Easter egg hunts for children are less about the delayed gratification
of grown-up treasure hunts, and more about grabbing the most chocolate, they
do tap in to that primal instinct that is the thrill of the chase. We love
to look for hidden things, and it is the looking, not the finding, that
provides the biggest kick.
Darley was “sucked in” to the Perplex City hunt by the alternative reality
game (ARG) element, although he also enjoys solving the cryptic clues and
puzzles on the accompanying game cards, but he soon realised that the part
he liked most was the real-life treasure hunt, making the most of his
navigational skills to find the cube before dozens of others. This hybrid of
virtual hunting on the web, crossed with tramping across an ancient wood,
says Darley, highlighted “where the reality of it clashed with the unreality
of it. There were many points where I did think: ‘What am I doing? Am I
mad?'”
Darley believes there is something primal about a treasure hunt but it might
just be the opportunity to do something exciting outside: “That's something
people rarely do these days.” The outdoorsiness is certainly part of the
draw for families trying to pry themselves away from the lure of indoor,
screen-based fun. And there is an inbuilt child-friendliness about the
treasure hunt. It is the stuff of old-fashioned childhoods, with lashings of
ginger beer and kids gambolling deep into the woods.
“It's fun for children, but they are also learning about geography, geology,
architecture, historical events and habitats,” says Steven Glazer, who works
with community groups in the United States to use treasure hunting as a way
to help young people learn about their environments. “The ‘fake' treasure is
the box they find, but the real treasure is finding that special place you
never noticed before, maybe the 600-year-old oak tree with a hollow where
the box is. The tree's cooler than the box.”
Some people enjoy treasure hunts for the puzzle solving, others for the
journey. And there are others who are drawn to looking for things mainly to
give walking or trekking outdoors some purpose.
Letterboxing on Dartmoor
“Letterboxing” and “geocaching” are two treasure-hunt-style hobbies that
involve the solving of clues, the finding of boxes or caches and lots of
walking in between. The letterboxes (not the red postal variety but small
weather-proof boxes) usually contain a logbook and a rubber stamp, which the
finder uses as proof of having found the box. Pat Clatworthy, a keen
letterboxer who took both her children, and now takes her grandchildren,
letterboxing on Dartmoor says: “The children love the freedom, but a lot of
retired people do it as well because it gets them out and is better than
vegetating in front of the telly. I know it sounds eccentric when I try to
explain the appeal of looking for these boxes and collecting stamps, but
it's not just an English eccentricity. People come to Dartmoor from all over
the world just to go letterboxing. What's nice about it is that it takes a
lot of concentration so you can't take your troubles with you.”
Geocaching in the city
This sentiment is echoed by Matt Williams, who got into geocaching, a more
high-tech version of letterboxing, where players use GPS navigational
devices to help locate the hidden caches. Williams found the hobby gave him
the impetus to exercise, to help combat depression and chronic fatigue
syndrome. “I found that looking for the cache gave me more motivation to
walk farther. If I got tired, but the GPS said I had to walk another 500m,
I'd do it,” he says.
Geocaching is a relatively new hobby, the participants (who both find and
create new caches) making use of technology and the internet to find the
coordinates of the locations. There is, concedes Williams, a bit of an
anorak element. “The men tend to be the geeks because they have all the
gadgets and whistles and top-of-the-range GPS's. Also, they might spend lots
of time disguising the cache they plant. I know someone who spent weeks on
camouflage, using expanding foam and paint to make it look exactly like a
rock.”
Could this work in the terror-alerted big cities? Wouldn't a little box
hidden, say, under a handrail make people a bit nervous? Williams says that
there are caches in London, and the Metropolitan Police are aware of all the
locations. But you do sometimes get funny looks if you are searching under
benches.”
That said, urban treasure hunts are very popular, particularly in the
burgeoning corporate team-building sector. Krystyna Starr, the senior sales
and events co-ordinator for CCC Events, which runs treasure hunts for
company days out, says: “They give people a chance to use their brains in a
way they might not normally do. Everyone works together. One person might be
good at solving riddles, another might be good at collecting items. They can
be conniving, though. We make sure everyone goes to the loo together so
nobody cheats.”
Family treasure hunts
What keeps everybody on board on a family- orientated treasure hunt? The
variety of ability, attention span and energy you get in a family can be
more divisive than unifying. Luise Frazer, the founder of Treasure Days, a
company that provides downloadable urban and country treasure hunts for
families, says it helps to have two levels of clues. “One for the family as
a whole, and an easier one for younger children. It's up to the family to
set the pace, but we find two hours is about right. Good, quirky locations
with interesting things to look at, and with refreshment stops on the way,
will generally keep everyone interested.
For urban dwellers, the best part of treasure hunting would be larking about
in countryside. Pam Dryden, who sets up treasure hunts from Cragside, a
National Trust property in Morpeth, Northumberland, says: “We find the whole
family gets involved in answering the quiz questions, and it is a really
nice part of the job, seeing families enjoying a day out. We seem to have
lost the art of entertaining children ourselves, so following trails is a
good way to get parents more confident to explore the countryside with
children. This is a safe way of doing that.”
For more information visit: www.nationaltrust.org.uk
; www.geocaching.com ; www.dartmoorletterboxing.org
; www.treasuredays.com ; teambuildingevents.co.uk
How to arrange an Easter egg hunt for kids
1. For a treasure hunt with young children, confine your hunt to your house
and garden; or, if you have friendly neighbours with children who are a
similar age to yours, use both houses and gardens. Decide what your end
point will be and work your way backwards. Each clue should lead on to the
next clue, and should be in a small container that is just visible to the
searching eye. Know your audience and don't be too clever. Aim to make ten
clues between start and end points, but give each team the first clue. It
takes longer than you think. Enlist the help of older children, who might
enjoy the planning more than the hunt.
2. Get very young children on board by providing picture or photo clues. For
example, a photo of a jam jar should lead the player to the cupboard where
you keep the jam. The next clue should be in an empty jam jar in that
cupboard. Older children and adults will enjoy personalised rhymes or
riddles, to do with family in-jokes or other inside knowledge. But they
should ask the younger children to help figure it out.
3. A phot hunt is ideal for families with a couple of digital cameras. Each
team has to photograph a list of items or situations. This could be a
certain type of bird that visits the garden, or a photograph of a situation.
For example, “Where does everyone fight to be in the morning?” (Answer: Each
team has to photograph each other in the bathroom.)
4. A scavenger hunt talkes less preparation than a treasure hunt. Provide each
team with lists of obscure objects to collect, or ones that might take a bit
of lateral thinking (ie, the Queen). Make firm ground rules before you
start, such as no going into private drawers or wardrobes.
5.If you're working in a larger area, such as a park or the streets in your
neighbourhood, you can make a simple map hunt. Draw a map of the area with a
starting point. Instructions should be simple: walk 20 paces left, then 40
paces right, etc. The end point could be, say, the park's picnic area, where
the rest of the family will be with lunch.
6.|In terms of treasure, think outside the Easter chocolate box. One of the
points of a treasure hunt is to work off the sugar energy, not to feed it. A
good prize is one that leads to another activity, such as a ball and bat, or
for the less energetic, some art materials or comic books and magazines.
