Hunting For Treasure and Clues

Friday March 30th 2012

This morning we took the tube to central London again to do the second of our 2 Treasure Trails. This one was in the St Katherine's Dock and Tower of London areas. It was a treasure hunt trail with the following mission: 

Can you find the missing treasure?

"Legend has it that in 1838 the schooner 'Johanna B' went missing en route to London from Africa, laden with gold and precious gems as a gift for the new Queen Victoria. Clues to the whereabouts of the treasure of the Johanna B are scattered in the area around St Katharine Dock and the Tower. Will you be the one to solve them and learn where the cargo was taken?

Completing Your Mission: Solve the clues to find out where the buried treasure is hidden. The answers are words, letters or numbers that you will find as you follow the trail. Solve the clue and cross off the location with the same answer on the treasure map. At the end of the trail you should be left with one place name - the location of the hidden treasure!!

This trail was much easier to solve than the spy trail. We were not sure whether the treasure hunting trails were all easier than the spy trails or whether we were just getting better with practice. It was great to see that Ryan was much more keen to be involved today so they boys took turns to read orders and clues.

We got to see the Tower Hill sundial, many artworks commemorating the history of the area, Thomas More Square, Marble Quay, Thomas' Bridge (although boy did we have a ton of trouble trying to find this one), St Katherine's Pier, Tower Bridge, Traitors Gate and the Tower of London.

We were also fortunate that every Friday there is a fresh food market at Marble Quay just outside the Dicken's Inn. Here there were food stalls from all corners of the world including Nigeria, Italy, Spain, and America. There were vegetarian stalls, home made fudge and cookies. The aromas were amazing. We settled on vegetarian paella, lasagne and pasta and meatballs. We also had to buy the world's biggest cookies that were covered in mini-chocolate eggs.


Once we arrived at the Tower of London we bought tickets and went in. We walked the inner wall which included the Medieval Castle, visited the Crown Jewels (a rare day with no queue), looked at information about torture tools, and visited the armoury in the White Tower. The White Tower was great because it had a hands on history section where the kids could try out a bow and other tools etc from the past.

When we finished at the Tower we found our final clues for the treasure trail across in the navy memorial gardens and then headed to Baker Street to try to find Sherlock Holme's house. 

The museum was spread over 4 floors and was full of interesting objects, displays and documents. The boys liked being able to dress up as Sherlock and Dr Watson. Connor in particular seemed to really enjoy this museum. This brought a long day to a close and it was time to head back on the tube.