Wilson Henry treasure hunt

I am in serious danger of breaking my own golden rule here, but what the hell. I have always refrained from talking about work on my blog but it was so exciting on Friday that I feel compelled to tell you about it.

We have two days a year at work where we go out together socially during the afternoon, as a full team.

Friday was one of those dates, a few days after the year-end when we can celebrate the work we have done during the previous year.

The team were talking about a treasure hunt they had done the year before, down on the river front, at the Albert Dock and along the Pier Head. They had bought the treasure hunt off the internet and they were disappointed to learn that some of the clues were hidden behind the re-development hordings at the Pier Head.

I had designed a couple of treasure hunts, for cars, back in the late 1980s and early 1990s for Yarm Sports and Social Club and I reckoned I could probably do a decent one on foot, so I made the offer.

Robert and I spent about 4 or 5 hours putting the route together, taking photos of things that might constitute clues around a circular route, from Victoria Street, to Castle Street, to Dale Street to William Brown Street and all those wonderful places there.

The route took in the Town Hall (with a chance to see the Lord Mayor SuperLambanana) and the biennial exhibitions nearby, the Liverpool World Museum (and in particular The Beat Goes On exhibition) and the Walker Art Gallery (and in particular Ben Johnson's City Scape - and amazingly he was actually IN the gallery when one of the team's went in and they got his autograph and asked him the questions directly!) and St George's Hall and St John's Gardens.

I worried endlessly about one or other of the clues having been removed in the two weeks since I had set the quiz, but amazingly one team found every single one of them. It was, if I say so myself, something of a triumph, and I was particularly chuffed, or should I say "made up" given the number of biennial art displays that the tour took in, with those competitors who told me that they had never been in some of those places before and were determined to go back and explore them properly at their leisure in future.

Great fun but I hope that next year someone else takes a turn in organising the treasure hunt so that I can join in, and of course be part of the winning team!