Last Supper

On Wednesday 2nd January 1974 John Cooper, the founder of our group, and his wife dined out with Les Bradbury and his then partner, Lillian. We reproduce here a copy of the actual bill for that dinner.

Sadly, this proved to be a last supper as John died a few days later from a heart attack. Ironically he had gone from being a virtual chain smoker to a non-smoker in the two years before his death at the age of 60.

In a way it was fitting that the four of them should have chosen to dine out at The Running Horses at Mickleham. This is in the heart of quiz-walking territory and has been used as the venue for many walks over the years.

Between the inaugural walk on 29th September 1957 and his death John Cooper made a prolific contribution. According to statistics compiled by Les Bradbury he organised no fewer than 46 walks in those 17 years. We owe him a lot.

Don't Get Lost

Organisers didn't make things easy for competitors in the early treasure hunts in the late 1950s. Today when you start a walk you get a complete set of directions along with the cryptic clues.

Not so then. Instead competitors were given a slip of paper called a clue sheet covering the first stage of the walk only. They then had to scramble around at the end of that stage to find the clue sheet for the next one, and so on. As one of the early competitors, Brenda Marks, puts it in a piece published in the club magazine "News and Views" in December 1958:

Now these are usually little rhymes written on flimsy pieces of paper and usually number about 16. On most occasions they are hidden in the most awkward places, on top of l2ft. brick walls, outside public conveniences, inside pigsties and outside public houses which shut five minutes before you arrived. You are expected to scratch about until you unearth the now soaking wet clues.

The receptacles usually used to hold the clue sheets were tobacco tins with a label stuck on the front asking members of the public not to walk off with the tin on the day in question. But even with this precaution in place there were many stories in the early days of competitors not being able to find the precious tin that would take them on to the next stage - something that especially seemed to afflict those coming up in the rear of the field after their fellow competitors (albeit unwittingly?) had made that tin a bit harder to find!

Solution? A "panic" envelope system was introduced - competitors were given a couple of sealed envelopes at the start, one giving the location of the halfway point, for use if they failed on the first half, the other giving the finishing point if they failed on the second half.

The picture shows a "panic" envelope from a walk that was organised by Peter Juneman in 1959 and started from Cobham and Stoke D'Abernon station. The envelope is unopened to this day, 48 years on!

However, if you hold it up in good light you can make out the words SANDOWN TEA ROOMS ESHER on the flimsy piece of paper inside. Opening the panic envelope in those days cost you a points deduction, so we wonder if anyone who actually got lost on clues 7 to 11 back in 1959 was smart enough to do the "light" test.

The "panic" envelope also reveals another sign of the times: the finishing location, Esher, was different from the starting location, Cobham and Stoke D'Abernon station. Back then competitors travelled to walk venues by suburban train, not by car, so it wasn't essential to make the walks circular, although many organisers did.

The End Of Quiz Walks

The tombstone and epitaph shown here appeared in the August 1964 edition of the club magazine "News and Views". Like Mark Twain's death the demise of treasure hunts was greatly exaggerated. In fact it was in 1964 itself that they were given a new lease of life by the decision to switch from the "all day" marathons to the "afternoon only" format that's still in use today.

As the anonymous creator of that premature epitaph was forced to acknowledge in the very next edition of "News and Views":

"The death certificate of the Treasure Hunting League seems to have been issued a trifle prematurely and the burial ceremony carried out with indecent haste. I'm glad to hear it. My apologies to the "corpse". If then the patient has been buried alive I hope it won't be long before he is exhumed and the kiss of life applied."

Andi Cap Treasure Chest

The trophy pictured here dates back to 1959. It was presented by John Cooper, the founder of our walks, and, as a disc on the trophy records, it is called the Andi'Cap Treasure Chest.

John's idea was that there should be a one-off event every year which could be won by anyone, regardless of how they were performing in the then newly-formed treasure hunters' league. The Treasure Chest was first competed for in 1959 and the winner was Peter Juneman. His disc for that year is on the front section of the chest.

Up to the time of his death early in 1974 John Cooper organised all the Andi'Cap walks, usually as the last event of the season. Since his death it has been the convention for the league winner to organise the Andi'Cap event as the first walk of the following season. But whoever comes out on top in the Andi'Cap is considered to have won it for the previous year.

Confused? Well, as you will see if you view the past winners table, a few of the winners themselves got the year of their win wrong! Incidentally, there's no room left now to fix a winner's disc on one of the chest's four sides. Instead you have to hang a disc from one of the two rings at either end of the chest.

Today the handicap is based on average scores in the relevant year. This usually makes it very difficult for those who have finished near the top of the league to win the Andi'Cap event, something of which John Cooper would surely approve were he alive today.

James Biggs, who is now our chairman, won the Andi'Cap trophy in 2003 and it very nearly came to grief in his hands. The trophy was in the boot of his car when he went to the tip one day to get rid of some rubbish. You've guessed it - the trophy ended up on the tip, and it was just in the nick of time that James realised what he had done and managed to retrieve it. Let's hope we can keep it safe now for another 48 years or so.