Gold!

Hurrah! We have completed the Alchemy Quest! ‘Salt’ wasn’t too tricky to find, once we’d run the gauntlet of the two black bears and Angus the cartoon bull. I’d always thought the snorts of steaming breath coming from the nostrils of enraged bovines was down to illustrator’s licence, but no, they really do that. It was a tad unnerving, especially when he started to paw (or hoof) the ground. ‘Sulphur’ was a little harder to locate, but fortunately we could keep in touch by mobile phone when the boys each followed the pointy-thing on their respective GPS, which were showing different directions, and I fussed around like a sheepdog whose flock had scattered. And luckily we all avoided tumbling into the canal as we rushed down the bank towards the towpath.

Then it was on to ‘Gold’. Now, I had the detailed instructions of where we were going, and I told the boys that the coordinates were for the parking place, and that it said we should park in the ‘Visitors’ Car Park’. You’d have thought that was fairly clear, but no. They decided the best place to park was at the side of the road, and that walking the rest of the way would be a good idea. And I was foolish enough to let them! It was a very, very long walk to the starting-point – nearly two miles, in fact. Gently uphill all the way. It was very pretty and peaceful, but that started to wear thin after a while. Anyway, we found all the locations we needed, and my sums-ability was up to the job, and we found the final cache. And that meant we had to walk all the way back again. I think it was about 5 miles on the return journey – at least that’s what my feet were telling me. By the time we got back to the cars Simon had lost the power of speech, and I was very nearly becoming girly.

Then we went to meet Marc. We arrived at the right village/town and Simon phoned him, and we were rather surprised to see that he was the lad almost immediately opposite us. After a couple of drinks in the pub we realised that it was nearly 4 o’clock and we unfortunately wouldn’t have time to go and visit the Morts, who were unable to join us this time, which was a disappointment. That meant it was only Ned, me and Simon who could share the one-off Pirate-Donkey celebration cake … it was very nice too.

Roll on the next time when the whole of team ‘Mr Edmonton’s Jig’ can go on the hunt together! Now I am off to soak my aching feet and legs (and probably the rest of me for good measure) in a nice, hot, bubbly bath ...