We were up at 08:30 again. We got up, ready and headed downstairs for breakfast. Graham had a mix of cornflakes and muesli with milk, a banana, natural yoghurt with berry compote and a cooked breakfast. He also had milk coffee and a couple of glasses of orange juice. I had muesli with almond milk, a satsuma, two mini pancakes with Nutella and a cooked breakfast. I also had a latte macchiato and some orange juice. It was much quieter at breakfast that morning.
After breakfast, we headed back to the room. We packed our few odds and ends. I had received an email to do express check out via the app. I quickly downloaded the app and checked out. While we were waiting for the lift, I took a couple of photos from the viewpoint. Then we headed out.
I had no idea where the starting point for the scavenger hunt was. We headed back to the station to consult the huge map near the entrance. This looked quite straightforward. We headed across the city centre and through old town. Just before we were entering the old town something caught my eye. When we were in Hull 18 months earlier, we noticed that they were restoring the old Burton’s menswear headquarters. This is a 1930s Art Deco building and now looks absolutely stunning.
It did not take us long to get to our starting point after this. However, the first clue had me stumped. It looked like there was supposed to be stylised ship in the pavement. From the graphic in the book, it looked like this was something quite big. However, we could not find it. We headed out towards the swing bridge and still could not find what we were looking for. We did however see all kinds of interesting bird. We retraced our steps and suddenly something caught my eye. It was a metal strip in the pavement with some engraved words. They matched some of the words on the graphic in the book. Rather than there being a picture of a ship, there were a lot of those medal strips and each of them contained various words that were related to ships. After this, solving the first clue was easy.
We had to backtrack slightly to reach the next clue. This was oddly specific as it told us to look for stone carvings on the Commercial Museum. We did find this without any trouble. I learned afterwards that what we were looking at was the original entrance to what is now the Hull and East Riding Museum. This solved another mystery.
Just ahead of us as we were following directions to the next clue, was a sign to the Museum Quarter. As long as I have been coming to Hull, the Museum Quarter had always existed. However, it used to look very different. The Museum Quarter kind of blended in with the rest of the old town in the past. It was called Museum Quarter as there were three museums relatively close together. I never had an idea prior to this visit how close they actually are to each other. This time we got drawn by a colourful sign advertising the Museum Quarter. This led to a beautiful, landscaped garden with a water feature, picnic area and a frog sculpture. The three museums have now got entrances from this garden. This is very well done.
I have always loved Streetlife, which is the transport museum. This is a mix of all kinds of historical vehicles and street scenes. It is incredibly well done. We had every intention of visiting in 2024, but I had run out of steam when we were planning to visit. This time, as we were there anyway, we decided to go inside. I am glad we did as I enjoyed it as much as I had remembered.
Right next to Streetlife is Wilberforce House. Wilberforce House is the birthplace of social reformer and MP William Wilberforce, who used his time as a member of Parliament to work for the abolition of slavery. I had walked past there many times, but I have never been inside. It turned out that this was not about to change. A tour was just about to start when we got there, and we had no interest in getting mixed up with this. We did however have a look at the garden, which is very nice.
We then picked up the treasure hunt again. The next clue was very similar to one of the clues on the Manchester treasure hunt. There were carved stone faces on a building. There were nine descriptions on stone faces in the book, but only seven of them corresponded to stone faces that could be found on the building. Each description had a letter attached to it and when the letters were put in the order in which the stone faces appeared on the building, they formed a word that then allowed us to eliminate one of the suspects.
The next clue had multiple levels to it. The first part was to find a grid with holes in it. There was a slight problem with this as there were two grids with holes in the vicinity. Still, we eliminated the first one pretty swiftly as each row had the same number of holes, which made no sense in the context of the clue. The second one however worked. The clue involved England’s smallest window as well as a street with a rather strange name. This is where I went wrong again. I miscounted the letters and got the wrong answer. It should have occurred to me that the resulting word did not make sense, but it was close enough to one of the animals in the book and I eliminated the wrong animal.
The next few clues involved stone carvings at various buildings. Some of them were very straightforward. The one involving carvings above the doors of the Guildhall was tricky, but entirely doable. There was however one clue that involved a stone with a carving in a park that went completely over my head. Everything looked the same. Graham had a go, but was none the wise either. In the end, I cheated and checked the additional clues at the back of the book.
At least that clue was there. We were not so lucky with the next clue. This took us back towards the city centre alongside Queen’s Gardens. This had been another favourite hangout of mine. However, Queen’s Gardens has been closed for refurbishment since 2023. When we came past there in 2024, it was a complete building site. This time it looked like it was close to completion, and I actually liked what I saw. Actually, the first phase opened the weekend after we were there. The clue referred to a statue, but there was no statue in this area. We wondered if this had been removed as part of the refurbishment as even when I looked at the photo clues online once we had completed the treasure hunt, it did not correspond to anything that we had seen.
The clue after this involved more stone carvings that were located on the Maritime Museum. The Maritime Museum is also going through a multiyear refurbishment at the moment and is due to reopen this summer. Thankfully, this did not affect the clue, and this was pretty easy. We then ended up on Queen Victoria Square, which is probably the most significant square in Hull. There are circles set into the pavement there and the largest circle contained a poem that we needed to decode the next clue.
The weather forecast had looked decent for that day, but this was not entirely accurate. It started to rain just as we were solving the last part of the clue. Thankfully the Princess Quay shopping centre is just opposite, and we headed into there to get out of the rain and for a bathroom stop. This made me rather sad. When we lived in Beverley, Princess Quay was a decent shopping centre, but it now is a bit of a ghost town. Still, it served a purpose. When we headed out again, the rain had stopped.
We just had to head across the square for our next clue, which was at Hull City Hall. Again, we had to find symbols in stone carvings. This time letters were assigned to the location of the symbol. The issue there was that the stone carvings were very high up. The Mystery Guide recommended to use a mobile phone to zoom in, and this worked great. The stone carvings are actually very pretty, and it is a real shame that they are so hard to see.
At this stage, I went slightly wrong. I knew that the first optional pub stop was in this area. Indeed, the Punch Hotel was right opposite. It was however two more clues away in the book. We headed straight there. Of course, if somebody asks, I will tell them that this was design. Indeed, just as soon as we set foot into the pub, the heavens opened once more. Graham had a local craft beer, and I had a pint of orange juice and lemonade. We decided to have lunch there. Graham had a pie with mash and peas. I had the curry of the day, which was a chicken Balti. We both enjoyed our choices.
I had a bit of a closer look at the next clue over lunch, and it became obvious why we were supposed to take the street to the right of the City Hall. The building where the clue was straddled three streets and we had to go down Paragon Street, which is to the right of the City Hall, across Chariot Street and come up Carr Lane, which is where we were at the moment. I figured even though we could probably work this out in reverse, it would be easier if we did this in the right order. We crossed the square again and followed the route that was suggested. This definitely made life easier.
Once we were back where we had started, we needed to employ our maths skills. We needed to use information from a mile marker and the number of fish that were in the pavement to find a specific word in the book that let us eliminate another colour.
The next clue had me completely stumped. It referred to Beverley Gate. I had never heard of this before, and we were supposed to be quite close to this. It turned out that this referred to a small excavation site near Burton House. You never stop learning. Then we were back on familiar territory. We had no trouble finding the next clue. Solving it was not quite as easy though. I definitely needed the extra clues for this.
The last clues involved the square in front of Hull Minster, and this was easy. I was tempted to have a quick look inside, but Graham had spotted that a service was about to start. We gave this a miss. Instead, we headed for the final reveal. This is when I noticed that I had eliminated the wrong animal at some stage. However, I got the colour and the final suspect right and the location of the golden telescope was therefore obvious. I headed inside another beautiful old pub. I had hoped that we would have another drink there, but Graham opted to stay outside. Once I had photographic evidence that we had solved the mystery, I slowly made our way in the general direction of the station.
We still had plenty of time until our train was due to leave. Quite close to the station, we came across a dessert cafe called Heavenly Desserts. I have since found out that this is actually part of a chain and they have two branches in Manchester. Thankfully, they are not in any parts of Manchester I ever go to as this would be seriously dangerous for my wallet and my waistline. We decided to check this out. Graham wanted white chocolate-sipped strawberries, but they did not have any. He ended up just having an Americano. I had the Sundae Royale, which consisted of cocoa hazelnut gelato, Ferrero Rocher, caramelised hazelnuts, crushed waffle cones, and warm Nutella. I also had a pistachio and white chocolate milkshake. Everything was delicious. We took our time.
At some stage, we could not justify staying any longer. We headed out and walked the short distance for the station. We still had over an hour until our train was due to leave. We settled down in the waiting room and I read my book. Once the platform appeared on the screen, we went across. We still had a short wait until they let us on. Still, we left on time and had a nice clear run to Leeds. We had to change there as there were some engineering works. The interchange was easy enough and the connecting train also left on time. Again, we had a nice clear run, and I spent this part of the journey reading as there was not much to see.
When we got back to Manchester, we had to give some thought on how to get home. Normally we would just have taken the tram, but there were engineering works there as well. In the end, we decided to take the tram to as far as it would take us. We had then planned to take the local bus home. As we were waiting for the next bus, we saw a rail replacement for the trams pull up on the opposite side of the road. We figured this was better than waiting for the bus. We had a bit of a wait until this service left, but we were in no hurry, and this was included in our train ticket. When we got home, we quickly unpacked and then we relaxed with a movie.
Dolphingirl’s Travels 
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