Game Keeper turned poacher at Castle Espie TQ

In spite of the overcast conditions, 24 enthusiastic explorers turned up for this evening’s second Trail Quest of the season at Castle Espie. They split into 9 teams, and had 90 minutes to get round as many clues as possible. For this event, the clues were all addresses, and the answers were the pictures on the house numbers.

As teams started to return to the car park, there was the usual lobbying and banter with the judges. Evie was taking no nonsense, and when the dust settled it was “Talk to me goose” who were clear winners with 395 points. Second was “The one and lonely” with 325, just ahead of “Two Little Ducks” on 320.

Many thanks to Castle Espie for hosting us this evening, and to Heather Hamilton for booking it and getting out the club bank card to pay for refreshments. It looks like trail quests are now an established event on the club calendar.

“Two Buscateers, two gliders, and a postman”

Clue 1 – 58 Ballydrain Road – a pheasant

Clue 2 – 31 Balldrain Road – Horse and Hound

“Send Help (part 2)” – deserved extra points for not only identifying the animals and plants in the pictures, but giving them names as well. (The spaniels at Ballydrain House will forever now be Kevin and Kirsty).

Clue 3 – 104 Ballydrain Road – Brambles

Clue 4 -21-23 Castle Espie Road – a Plough

“Cany Man” – also deserved extra points for identifying the species of cockerel. The judges may need some extra leeway next year to reward creativity :-)

Clue 5 – Ballydrain House – Kevin and Kirsty

Clue 6 – 13 Quarry Road – horse drawn plough

“Talk to me goose” – Barry’s experience of organising the last event paid off tonight as the team took a decisive victory, although the jury’s out on the strategy of taking pictures of the answers and writing them up later given the time penalties…

Clue 7 – 10 Tullynakill Road – a runner

Clue 8 – 47 Ardmillan Road – a Cockerel

“D and D” – getting stronger at every event. A team to watch in the future..

Clue 9 – 22 Ballydorn Road – a Seahorse

Clue 10 – 38 Ballydorn – a Willow Tree

“Two Little Ducks” – finished with 10 minutes to spare, and missed out on second by just 5 points. I can almost hear David Brailsford saying “marginal gains”…