We managed to get away for 5 days during the summer holidays and it was so well needed. It wasn't Texas, it wasn't even Belgium but it was 'slightly' sunny Somerset, as we headed off to our dog friendly AirBNB with heated swimming pool.
Whilst the apartment was a delight and the kids would have spent their whole time in the pool, come rain or cloud, we still wanted to include something where we could explore our surroundings.
Taunton as a town is very pretty, but is a half day mooch for a family with a dog in the rain. And so we looked where else we could venture and the opportunities of doing more than having lunch in these other towns.
That's when I was introduced to Treasuretrails.co.uk by a friend who had done it locally and posted about it on FB. The nice thing about TT is if you order your map in advance they will send you a much nicer version than the one I downloaded and printed on my running-out-of-colour-ink printer and slightly damp paper. But the benefit of not being organised is that we still had our map/booklet printed off before we set off on our trail.
We opted for a murder mystery and were tasked with eliminating suspects and murder weapons from the clues provided whilst walking around the very pleasant Devonshire town of Tiverton.
Again, it was quite a rainy day but we had macs on and James and I had the determination. To be brutally honest, the girls sneered at the idea to start with, so we gave them a map, and I told myself not to butt in and let them lead the way.
The suggested time on the map was 2 hours and about 1.5 miles of walking, and they were pretty much on target and so we parked up near our starting point, booklet and pen in hand and set off around the town of Tiverton.
The great thing is that you do this in your own time, and where others might want to read every plaque, every grave in every churchyard or historical building, we're very happy with the "ooh that's pretty", taking a photo and moving on.
The directions were pretty easy to follow, although we thought we were lost at one point, we just hadn't walked far enough along the road, and I ended up calling Treasuretrails customer support, who were quite helpful. She had her googlemaps on the screen whilst I was trying to work out the road name we were on. Took a little time but we soon coordinated together where we were and we could head off on our journey.
The girls actually loved it, although it took a while for them to admit that, as we all had to get involved finding names or dates on our clues and then matching them to those on the back of the booklet. It got a little competitive at times too which added to the adrenaline. Naturally we stopped off for a coffee break to avoid the rain and recharge our batteries, which added to the entertainment of our day out in Tiverton. There are hundreds of these treasure trails throughout the UK and we will definitely be doing another one again soon. They would make great birthday parties too and for a tenner, a hell of a lot cheaper than hiring an entertainer or venue for the same amount of time.
