Autumn outing – go treasure hunting

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It seems that the best of summer is fading fast ,with a decidedly autumnal feel in the air. But Autumn is the perfect time to get out walking – and not just to hunt for blackberries, conkers and pretty leaves.

We have over 240 treasure hunts set up across the country to help you enjoy the change of season while finding nuggets of interesting information in your local area.

Armed with a treasure hunt booklet that contains directions, a map and questions, treasure hunters have to seek out the answers by examining the local buildings, streets and statues that they might ordinarily walk right past.

The hunts take about two hours to complete but can easily be turned into a whole day out by stopping for lunch or visiting some attractions en route. Unlike pre-arranged walking tours or events, these hunts can be done at any time making them an ideal last minute activity, suitable for all ages.

Given the changeable British weather, it can be difficult to plan a day out until the day itself. Our treasure hunts can be ordered in advance as a printed booklet or downloaded instantly, making it easy to make the most of a crisp Autumnal day. Whether it’s a family with children looking for a way to spend time together, a couple on a romantic stroll or a group of friends wanting a bit of fun, our hunts make a great day out for everyone.

The hunts start from just £4.99 plus postage for a black & white printed hunt, £6.99 plus postage for a colour printed hunt or can be downloaded from £7 depending on the number of participants.  They can also be personalised to make your family day out even more special. Go to www.huntfun.co.uk for more information.

 

 

Fresher’s Week! Why not try a treasure hunt for first year orientation?

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Fresher's Week - get students exploring their new town

It’s almost that time of year – when school leavers flee the nest and head off to uni. While it’s hugely exciting, it can also be pretty daunting not knowing anyone or being unfamiliar with a new city. Most colleges and universities hold some kind of fresher’s week activities to help everyone get to know each other.  We have a suggestion for any student unions or faculties in charge of organising this year’s events: treasure hunts!

How to do it

We have over 240 treasure hunts set up across the country so we’re almost certain to have a hunt where you are. Get students to meet at a designated place. Put them into groups or teams of four or five, give each group a treasure hunt booklet and set them off. The booklets contain a map, directions and clues and they will have to seek out the answers to the questions, normally found on the side of buildings or landmarks.  While looking for the clues, they’ll also get the chance to discover other places that might be of interest to them – like a laundromat, all you can eat buffets or clubs. And there’s always the possibility of popping into a few of the pubs en route to try them out!

If you’ve got them working in teams, you can also get them to do some of the optional extra activities like singing happy birthday loudly to a group of strangers to score extra points. It can get pretty competitive, particularly if you arrange a prize for the winning team (a month’s supply of pot noodles or a case of beer?)

It’s a great way to let them meet new people and find their way around their new town. While our hunts do follow a set route, if there are any key places you want them to find, we can create a bespoke hunt for you.

For £49.99, a university, college or student union could buy a standard group treasure hunt pack which contains five hunt booklets, which is sufficient for up to 20 participants working in five groups of four, five huntfun pens, a separate answer sheet and suggestions on organising the hunt. You can purchase extra hunt booklets and pens depending on the size of the group. A cheaper black and white printed option without pens costs just £34.99.

Alternatively, groups can buy downloadable hunts which you print yourselves or which are viewable on smartphones, ipads, kindles and other handheld devices. The first 100 participants cost £1.50 each, additional participants cost £1.00 with a minimum price of £30.  There’s also a new GPS version in a select number of locations.

To find out more, email info@huntfun.co.uk or call Tracy on 01904 491549 or visit www.huntfun.co.uk.

 

Team building fun

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A high street retailer with over 750 branches nationwide recently got 20 of its customer services managers together to do one of our hunts as a team building exercise.

They split the group into four teams and according to the organiser, everyone participated fully.

“They were keen to complete all of the extra tasks as they wanted to secure as many points as possible. They were working with people that they wouldn’t usually work with/speak to so it was an ideal start to their relationship building. They all had photo/video footage and were happy to share it amongst the wider team so we all got to hear/share their stories. It enabled them to work together whilst having fun. The weather was kind to us and everyone seemed really relaxed at the end of it,” the spokesperson said.

Other comments from the team included:

“It was great fun, an ideal opportunity to get to know one another.”

“Really enjoyed the opportunity to work together away from the day job.”

“I can’t believe we did all those activities, the people we asked thought we had gone mad.”

“Great start to the day, really enjoyed walking around the village it was very serene.”

“The map was easy to follow and it was interesting to learn about the area.”

“The whole team were highly complimentary with regards to the hunt and they all enjoyed the leisurely time together whilst having fun.”

“The huntfun team were a pleasure to deal with, I found them to be very friendly and highly knowledgeable. Nothing was too much trouble and the service was super quick and efficient.”

“I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend you.”

So if you have a work team that could do with a bit of fun out of the office, why not give one of our hunts a try. Click here to find out more

 

 

I’m bored

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How many times have you heard ‘I’m Bored!’ already these summer holidays? We’ve heard it about 15 times a day and we’re only one week in.

Our treasure hunts are brilliant boredom beaters. If you haven’t planned ahead and ordered one of our printed hunts, you can always order a download today, print at home and head out. Or try our new GPS hunts.

Other ideas to keep the nagging to a minimum but that won’t cost you a fortune include:

  • do the Storylab Summer Reading Challenge, run by libraries nationwide. Children choose books and after they’ve read them, they get to collect stickers as a reward. We visited the library twice this week! And it costs nothing.
  • hold a mini olympics. Find your local park and set up some challenges. If the park has an obstacle course, time your kids to do it without touching the ground. Make a triple jump course using sticks or jumpers. Lay three sticks parallel to each other with a foot distance between them. The kids need to hop over the sticks without touching them. Each time they get over all three sticks, move them further apart until they really have to stretch. Hold mini football or basketball shoot outs. Hold running races. All free! Have a few treats on hand as prizes.
  • Bake. When all else fails, get the eggs, flour and butter out and get the kids baking with you. It keeps them entertained for a while and they have something yummy to eat afterwards
  • Photography hunt. You could do this indoors if it’s raining or outdoors if it’s fine. Let the kids use a digital camera or your phone or buy disposables. Give them a list of a things to take pictures of and leave them to it if indoors (you can grab a few minutes of quiet to get some work done) or get some fresh air with them as they head outdoors. If they’re into arts and crafts, afterwards you can get them to turn their pictures into a collage or poster.
  • Pick your own – if you live anywhere near a place that lets you pick your own fruit, get the kids out and picking. They love it and it gives you plenty of fresh ingredients to use in your baking projects!

Please share your ideas for cost effective ways to keep the kids happy this summer.

Drum roll please…..announcing our new GPS Treasure Hunts!

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We’ve had many people tell us that they want to do our treasure hunts but often haven’t planned ahead by ordering a printed hunt in advance or lack a printer for the downloadable option. Then they find themselves in a new city they’d like to explore or sun comes out and they want to get out and enjoy it……….

So we’ve come up with a solution that will let you enjoy the same treasure hunts but in a brand new, interactive way using just your mobile phone, which you can do on the spur of the moment.

NEW GPS HUNTS!

Using a smart phone (iphone or Android) or touch screen tablet, the geo-location tracking device will show where you are and the location of hunt clues. The challenge is to navigate to all the clues, answering questions as you go. The score page keeps track of how you and any other teams are doing.

Just like our normal hunts, our new GPS hunts help people explore an area, finding hidden history that they might normally walk right past. We’ve also included optional activities for you to do plus information on key landmarks nearby in case you’d like to turn your treasure hunt into a longer day out.

What’s more, you can now split your family or friends into groups, to have a competitive hunt. The online scorer lets you see how the other teams are doing, adding to the fun. We will be adapting this for corporate groups and hen parties in the future to include optional team building activities to be completed en route.

Our new GPS hunts  are currently available in Brighton (central area), Bristol (harbourside area), Canterbury (central area), Cardiff (Castle end of city), Edinburgh (central area), London (Westminster), Manchester (Town Hall end of city), Newcastle (central area), Oxford (central area) and York (Minster end of city). They will soon also be available in Leeds, Norwich, Birmingham, London West End, Aberdeen, Liverpool, Bath, Chester, Bournemouth and Cambridge.

You need to check whether your device is compatible by using the free mini GPS hunt on the huntfun website.  If it’s compatible, simply order your selected hunt from the website and get started immediately. Do make sure you have a fully charged phone before you set off though!

The GPS hunts cost £12 plus £6 for each additional team (up to four teams). An introductory special offer of 50% off is available for a limited time using the code GPS123. Go to www.huntfun.co.uk/FamilyGPS to find out more.

We’ve just made the summer holidays a whole lot easier for you – so get out and have some fun!

Bastille Day – head over to Paris and get exploring

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It’s Bastille Day on Saturday, the day our nearest neighbours celebrate their national day. If you fancy getting into the French celebrations, grab a train or ferry over to the continent and have a mini weekend break.

There’s plenty on – you can see the full programme here – but it includes a military parade down the Champs Elysee, fireworks from the Eiffel Tower (with a Disco  theme this year), the Fireman’s Ball (parties held in over 40 fire stations across the city) and picnics in the Château de Versailles.

Round off your weekend with a lazy brunch on Sunday morning followed by one of our four Paris treasure hunts to help you explore the bits of the city you might ordinarily walk right past. Choose from the Eiffel Tower to Metro Duplex, Sacre Coeur to Moulin Rouge, Louvre to Place de la Concorde or Notre Dame and the Latin Quarter.

Have fun and Vive La France!

Wedding Gift Idea

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It’s wedding season. If you’re stuck for something to buy the happy couple – perhaps they have all the vases and dinner plates they need – what about getting them a personalised treasure hunt that they can do together?

You could select a hunt in their home town which they could do any time as the new ‘Mr & Mrs’. Or if they’re honeymooning in the UK or Paris, you could get them a treasure hunt to do while they’re away, a fun way for them to explore the area.

The hunts can be personalised with a special message for the happy couple on the front cover. Or if you have pictures of them and know them well, you could go for the Plus4 option that lets you include 4 pictures and 4 questions personal to them.

It’s a fun way for them to spend time together as blissful newly weds and gives them a keepsake too.

Personalised hunts cost £12.49 while the Plus4 hunts cost £22.49. If you wanted to add something to it, you could buy them a picnic hamper or a bottle of champagne for a bit of romance after their hunt.

So step away from the china teapots and get them something fun!

Go to www.huntfun.co.uk to order.

Are you happy at work?

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For many people these days, work isn’t that much fun. The days where companies had money to splash out on employee perks like huge summer or Christmas parties, week-long off-sites and trips abroad are a thing of the past. Budgets are being squeezed. There are redundancies, lay offs and pay freezes.

The pressure to hang onto a job is also increasing as it’s harder to find employment in the current economic environment and household bills seem to be rising daily. So there’s no time for fun, it’s all about proving that you deserve your job. Right?

While we know that work is about, well …working, that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t also be fun. Employees who are happy are also more productive. So here at huntfun (clue is in the name as to how we feel about it) we are interested to know just how much fun work is these days.

We’d love it if you could help us with this by taking our very short survey. We promise it is super quick and can be done entirely anonymously – or if you want to include your email address, we’ll enter you into our draw to win one of our treasure hunts, the perfect thing to put some fun back into your life.

Click here to take survey

Thanks in advance. Now go smile at your work colleagues. :-)

We need you Great Britain!

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Right now, the British public are being asked to vote for their favourite things that make Britain ‘Great’ as part of the Great Exhibition 2012. This is what it’s all about:

In The Great Exhibition 1851, we competed against the world in the exhibition of all nations with Britain as Host Nation. In 2012 we are the Host Nation for the largest sporting competition in the World and the platform from which the Queen will celebrate her Diamond Jubilee. 2012 truly is the year to remind ourselves and rejoice in all that is “Great” about Great Britain in the 21st Century.

The Great Exhibition 2012 would like to invite the whole of the Country to join our online community and to nominate their own personal ‘Great’ of Great Britain. This can be done by registering as an Ambassador, creating a “Great” and sharing your videos, photographs, and stories with the Nation and encouraging your community to vote for you – we want you to tell us what/who/where you think is “Great”.

Now we know that there are many great things in this country you could vote for (and you’re not limited to one), but we’d like to politely ask (ok beg) you to consider voting for huntfun, and here’s why:

  1. We’re a British small business – and small businesses need all the help they can get.
  2. We’re trying our very best to help get the British public active and off exploring their local areas.
  3. Through our treasure hunts, we are opening the eyes of so many people to things they’d normally walk past, things that should be noticed – like plaques remembering a once famous novelist or kindly philanthropist or interesting historic event that isn’t big enough to make it into most guide books but still gives us fascinating insight into lives past.
  4. They’re fun!
  5. They make it easy for the entire family to spend some quality time together.

So please take a couple of moments and CLICK HERE to vote for us.

Thank you very much for your support.

Enjoy the longest day of the year with an evening treasure hunt

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June 21st (although some say June 20th) is the longest day of the year. With the sun only going down well after 10pm, you have plenty of time to head off on a treasure hunt after work. And here’s why you should:

Sometimes life gets a bit rushed. Whether it’s work or school or family life, it can feel a bit like a hamster wheel as you rush from thing to thing. Stress can build up and you start to long for the weekend, but then that becomes a crazy rush too.

We have a suggestion on how to recharge your batteries and make your week feel like a weekend.

Grab a work colleague or your husband, wife, girlfriend, boyfriend, friend, family member or kids. Download a treasure hunt in your local area from www.huntfun.co.uk, print it and today or tomorrow (whichever day you feel is the longest!) head out and enjoy the late evening sunshine.

Our treasure hunts take roughly two hours to complete at a leisurely stroll, so you’ll have plenty of light to complete it. Following clues and directions in the download, you make your way past a number of local landmarks.Take your time to really look at the places you normally just walk right past. You’ll see how much is hidden right in front of you. You could stop for a drink or light bite on the way or end with a late evening meal once you’re done. You’re almost certain to have forgotten your stresses and worries by the time you get home.

So go on, what are you waiting for – get out and give your week a mini vacation.

Downloads start at just £7.