Can you remember what life was like before the Beast From East? It came and ravaged London Town and caused us (well, me) to become hermits for a week so as not to catch hypothermia and frostbite. I kind of wonder if real life still exists outside my front door. Real life wasn’t too bad really, compared with cabin fever. I went out and even occasionally did stuff with other people.
One of those time was a few weeks ago now when I went on a mega mystery tour* with the lovely lot at Megabus.
The Game Is Afoot
We were split into four teams to take on dastardly Moriarty and his doomsday device. Once we’d been briefed by two of London’s best bobbies we boarded the Megabus and where whisked off to our first location, Westminister Abbey. It was here that we managed to catch up with Sherlock himself who had a few clues for us – providing we could woo him by singing his favourite tune, of course!
With questions to answer, clues to crack and challenges to complete it was a very busy evening. Good job we had the bus to return to, to use as a base so we could tag all our evidence and get it correctly stored away.
Cracking The Cryptex
We’d journeyed across London, from Westminster to Trafalgar Square and on to Covent Garden and by the time we were ready to climb aboard the bus again we, as a team, were feeling pretty jubilant. We’d gathered up all our clues and cracked the code to open the cryptex. We’d found the code to deactivate Moriarty’s doomsday device and we’re convinced that once we returned to our hotel base to debrief we’d be heralded as heroes.
We couldn’t have been more wrong. We came last out of the four teams. By something ridiculous like 10,000 points! *Insert facepalm emoji*
Facing my fears
I’ll be honest, once we got back and found out we weren’t the winners I was kind of relieved. Sid, the Megabus mascot, had arrived to welcome us back and help the winning team celebrate. “But why the relief Laura?” I hear you cry! Sid freaked me right out. I’m sorry, mate! Just the sight of him as we disembarked had me running for the wine once we got inside. Obviously, I needed it just to calm my nerves. Nothing else!
We may have come last and I may have had the b’jeezus scared out of me but it was a fantastic evening and I still have a bit of a giggle now thinking about the tour.
Megabus by Name, Mega by nature
I had a bit of a preconceived idea in my head about Megabus, and coach travel in general. It was something I saw as confined to my past. Relegated to my student days when the price of the train was way beyond my financial reach. But spending an evening being ferried around London on one of their coaches has changed my mind. They’re much more spacious and considerably more comfortable than I remembered. Definitely not something I’ll dismiss so quickly in future.
Big thanks to Matt Chappell and Search Laboratory for the photos.
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