I awoke at dawn to join Captain Elizabeth Digby (alias Capt. Bess) on her ship The Rising Pearl. Right after breakfast, we weighed anchor and set sail through Oxford to hunt for treasure.
Capt. Bess’ Treasure Hunt definitely encourages an ésprit de corps amongst your crew, who are encouraged to choose their own piratey names at the beginning and positions as navigator (in charge of the maps), first mate (general motivator-in-charge) or lookout (as many as you like). You also get to text Captain Bess at every stage, so it is fully interactive and she’ll tell you if you’ve found treasure or are drifting off course.
Capt. Bess is enthusiastic, but often speaks in riddles - though she will give extra clues if you text HINT to show you need help. I thought it was a pity that you only get your mark if you answer correctly the first time, but there have to be rules on board ship after all and there didn’t seem to be a lot of sanctions available to her – no walking the plank, no rotting in irons… not even weevil-filled biscuits (though you could bring your own)! She also supplies handy, well-drawn maps to ease your way around the tricky terrain of Oxford city centre if you are unfamiliar with it.
Unfortunately, Capt. Bess occasionally strays into unknown waters and tries to educate as well as entertain Sadly, she is a bit out of her depth, but perhaps The Rising Pearl doesn’t have Wifi or a library? St George’s Tower is described as dating from ‘around 1300’, when we knew that it was built by Robert D’Oilly just after the Norman Conquest in 1071. More significant to the trail, she misidentifies St Michael as St George – yes, they both kill dragons and have a shield with a red cross, but one is an archangel (which is why the statue has wings) and one isn’t and… well, why would you put a carving of another saint in a street named after St Michael?
The riddles are fun and well-composed, though poor St Martin really doesn’t deserve to be called a ‘miserly toad’ (as is explained later, but still, it is a bit off-putting). We found the riddles took a bit of working out, so that added challenge as well as fun. They also made you look hard at things you might not have noticed before even if you are from Oxford, so there was an element of discovery for a local as well as someone new to Oxford.
The Oxford Treasure Hunt is advertised as being ‘designed for adults and curious kids aged 8 and up’. Personally, I think this is definitely something best done with fairly junior crew members – unless you have been indulging in a little bit too much rum as a member of a hen or stag party.
For an intelligent adult, this provides a nice walk around Oxford and a few (though really rather few, given that there are only 11 questions) points of interest, but is pretty devoid of anything approaching intellectual challenge and the weakness and scantiness of the information supplied (all in a pirate accent with frequent ‘ye’s’ and ‘yer’s to remind you that you are supposedly in a pirate ship) means that you won’t actually learn a lot and shouldn’t quite trust what you are told anyway. I’d take the suggestion that it is for ‘sightseeing’ with a pinch of sea-salt – or rather, you will see the sights, but you won’t actually know what you are seeing. The route takes you under the Bridge of Sighs and past the Bodleian, the Divinity School and the Sheldonian Theatre but there is no commentary to tell you what they actually are. On the other hand, if you really just wanted a nice, directed walk with an occasional bit of problem-solving, then it is worth the £9.99, particularly if there are several of you.
I think this is an imaginative initiative, but I also think the Treasure Hunt company needs to do a bit more work refining their Treasure Hunt, doing their research and providing different options for different types of treasure hunters. One size doesn’t fit all, though the WhatsApp type communication clearly has a lot of potential as a way of delivering walks without a live guide. As it is, it’s a bit of fun, particularly for people with kids and if you’ve got three kids to entertain for an afternoon, it’s worth doing.