‘A great way of getting under the skin of a city’: the rise of urban treasure hunts

If you spot someone in a busy city centre street with a puzzled, possibly pained look asking their companions whether that’s an elephant at the top of a drainpipe, they are probably not mad – but on an urban treasure hunt.

There has been, one city tourism boss said, an “explosion” in the number and popularity of treasure and scavenger hunts in the UK.

From tracking down art thieves in Penzance to investigating an am-dram murder in Inverness, treasure hunts are a craze popular with couples, families and groups including hen parties.

Increasingly, companies are using treasure hunts for team-building. Forget networking, embrace netwalking. Why book a stuffy hotel function room when you can work together outside and also have a drink halfway round?

Most treasure hunts do not have prizes, apart from bragging rights, although the German company Komoot is this month upping the ante by staging a hunt in Bristol offering, it says, £32,500 in prize money.

Paul Fawkesley, left, and Ian Drysdale, right, have developed treasure hunts in 16 cities including York (pictured). Photograph: Gary Calton/The Guardian

This is the summer of treasure hunts, and on a sunny August day the Guardian embarked on a hunt in York accompanied by the two men who devised it, Paul Fawkesley and Ian Drysdale. So, no pressure.

“We’ve never tailed someone on a hunt before,” said Drysdale. “It could be great … or it could be moderately awkward.”

Participants are guided round the city by a Captain Bess character who has heard you’re looking to join her ship, the Rising Pearl. Maps and instructions are sent to your phone and you search for clues and solve cryptic puzzles, all the time coming across things in the city most people never knew were there.

A character guides participants around the city, with maps and instructions sent to your phone. Photograph: Gary Calton/The Guardian

Without giving too many secrets away, it’s fair to say there was a terrible start to the hunt, stemming from misunderstanding a question about degrees. Was the answer 360? “No.” 90? “No.” 45? “Nay, that’s not it.” Fed up, Bess finally gives up the answer and we quietly move on.

Once you get the hang of the puzzles, it is enormous fun. It’s only when you’re not mindlessly milling along busy streets looking at shops you’re not really interested in that you realise how many people are doing just that.

Participants are likely to see parts of the city they have never seen before – including, in York, an empty lane with arguably the best, most photographable view of York Minster. Just feet away are streets teeming with tourists and trickier photo opportunities.

Finding a quieter way to approach York Minster. Photograph: Gary Calton/The Guardian

The pair’s company, Treasure Hunt Tours, stems from a lo-fi hunt Fawkesley created years ago to entertain friends when they visited him in his adopted home of Liverpool.

Fawkesley, who has an engineering background, and Drysdale, with an arts background, met when they worked at a Co-op Group innovation unit.

Soon after launching their treasure hunt business the pandemic hit, but they stuck with it and afterwards found a new eagerness among people to get out and about.

They have grown and grown since, and now have treasure hunts in 16 cities. “It does feel we are riding a wave,” said Drysdale. “People like them because it’s flexible and they can do it in their own time.”

Business is good, particularly with company team-building groups, now accounting for about two-thirds of their clients.

Drysdale said he and Fawkesley spent weeks in the cities traipsing round looking for stories and quirks which could be turned into cryptic puzzles. “We spend a lot of time on Google Maps, casing a city, but there is no substitute for getting out down on the ground,” he said. “We do a lot of legwork.”

One practical reason for that is that the hunt is provided to people’s phones, so it is best to avoid noise and traffic. “We haven’t lost anyone yet,” said Fawkesley.

‘Once you get the hang of the puzzles, it is enormous fun.’ Photograph: Gary Calton/The Guardian

The UK’s domestic tourism market is big, with the latest figures from Visit Britain suggesting 77% of people were planning a domestic overnight break in the past 12 months.

Treasure hunts are a great addition to the landscape, said Emma France, the head of Marketing Sheffield. “I would say there’s been an explosion of them.

“Five, seven years ago you would probably struggle to find one or two walking tours. Now treasure or scavenger hunts are all over the place. They are a great way of getting under the skin of a city that you might not have seen before.”

Or even if you thought you knew a place, France added, recalling one she did with her 13-year-old daughter – “she absolutely loved it” – and colleagues. “The one we did was really, really good fun but actually quite complicated as well. We had to work hard.

“I probably shouldn’t say this but I’ve worked on promoting Sheffield in various different guises for 25 years and on the treasure hunt there were things I had never seen before.”

Speedboats, ghosts and money

• London: the capital has many treasure hunts available, particularly for the booming team-building market. ClueGo even offers a chartered speedboat blasting along the Thames, promising a “treasure hunt with extra thrills and spills”.

• Glasgow: a ghost hunt, the evocatively named The Soul That Got Away, is one of a number of treasure hunts in the city. It says it blends folklore, mystery and exploration. “Can you reclaim your soul – or will you become just another story Glasgow whispers about?”

• Bristol: the German navigation app company Komoot says it is popular around the world, “but in the UK we’re just getting started. We want to change that, and what better way than by having some fun together?” The fun will be what they bill as the UK’s “most ambitious treasure hunt with £32,500 in real money prizes”. It takes place 19-24 August.