5 Steps to a Birthday Treasure Hunt

Step 1: Where to start? Well generally the best place to start is from home. Fortunately this family of treasure hunters lived close to Preston Park in Brighton. For those of you who don`t know it, Preston Park is a decent size with a number of interesting and unusual features including a velodrome,a pet cemetery,Roman statues,the rules of Petanque displayed and a large clock tower. With a few directions in mind to access the park the first step is complete.

Step 2: Who is it for? It is important to get a feel for the person whose birthday the treasure hunt is celebrating. This treasure hunt was for a 70 year old. The family sent me photos and information about him(following ideas that I sent to them) that I could use to connect to the questions and general presentation of the hunt. Once I have received these it can really mould the style and, more particularly, the content of the hunt. It is actually a lot of fun for the family to sift through possible photos from different stages in the person`s life.

Step 3: Site visit/set the route and questions. It`s ok stepping inside what you know to be a nice park, but now the tricky part begins. Regular questions of interest are required along the way (bearing in mind the point earlier about links to the birthday person). This family requested riddles and crossword style questions on route too, instead of photo/video clip challenges-which may be more interesting for a younger age group. This actually helped on this occasion as there were a couple of stretches across the grass which didn`t have notable things to see. I was able to include fun general knowledge questions about 1951, the year of birth, as well.

Step 4: Where to finish: This is not as silly as it sounds. Preston Park accounted for about 60% of this treasure hunt so it wasn`t going to be a circular hunt and I wanted it to carry on into Brighton. One snippet of information I had was that the person whose birthday it was for had been a commuter from Brighton to London for 40 years! Brighton Station was the only place this could finish! I was able to use some interesting side streets that I do not normally have the opportunity to include in order to get there. This is an important thing to consider when the treasure hunt is for locals who will be well aware of the regular attractions and points of interest.
Step 5: Write it up and present it attractively in a pdf file: By the end of stage 4 you have a pretty good idea as to how well everything should turn out. Have the questions been consistently spaced, are there enough question options to choose from, will the photos that have been sent combine well with the text. Time now to write it up and present to the customer. Typically, a birthday treasure hunt will comprise of a front cover with photos on and a title, then a challenges page and finally the route questions interlinked with photos that provide the route. For this one the riddles ,general knowledge and crossword style questions were interspersed in the route questions instead of the challenges sheet.

The best thing about personalised treasure hunts, and in this case a personalised birthday treasure hunt, is that by design they are always going to be different every time.This of course brings its own challenges.
Would you like to buy a birthday treasure hunt for that `oh so difficult` person to buy for?
Contact Tim at info@blackcattreasurehunts.co.uk to get your booking started. You will be nicely surprised too by what good value it is as well.