Escape

Sunday 21st June was Father’s Day in the UK and, as usual, my daughters sent cards and gifts.

They always say that I’m really difficult to buy for but I usually disagree with them. I like to say it’s not me, it’s just that once you reach a certain age you pretty much have everything you need. In fact you start to consider divesting yourself of “stuff” and I know my granddaughters are keen to help me with that. They can’t wait to clear out my garage, preferably without me being present.

Anyway, back to Sunday.

Keeley,  my granddaughter, had arranged to take me out but would not tell me where. She kept the whole thing secret, despite my constant questions …

“What do I need to wear?” “What footwear,  do I need my wellies?” “Will I need my bathers?” 

And statements like “I don’t do shopping!” “Remember I’m 74, I don’t  do anything athletic!” and ” Don’t go breaking your grandad!”

Anyway,  she managed to keep the secret right up until we parked up outside the Cascades shopping centre in Portsmouth. I haven’t been down there in over a year so I have no idea what businesses are in there. Everything I’ve read in recent times says that Portsmouth has gone the way of so many British town centres, with empty stores all around. Looking for clues I scoured the visible store names but nothing jumped out.  Keeley asked me if I had guessed yet to which I replied quite randomly

“Is it an escape room?”

I’ve no idea where that thought came from and much to my surprise she confirmed that yes, we were indeed going to do an escape room.

Apparently she has previously been to four escape rooms and thought that this kind of experience would be right up my street .

This was going to be my first and I was immediately excited to get involved.

On entry to the building we were met by the young lady who was to be our host. She took us through the obligatory health and safety rules and then a brief rundown of the back story to our room and the challenges we might encounter.

The building contains a number of rooms. Our specific challenge was to be “Dr Ryddle’s Memories”. The brief back story for this room, taken from the website, is …

Dr. Ryddle’s Memories is an escape room game where you are pitted against perplexing challenges and puzzles inside the mind of one of the greatest 21st century scientists. As you enter the Mind Space, you will walk through the memories of Dr. Ryddle in the deepest quarters of his mind to discover scientific breakthroughs that the doctor never told the world. But that’s not all. The time is ticking and you only have one hour to recover the secrets and the key to escaping Dr. Ryddle’s mind!

Fully briefed we were led to the room, ushered inside, and the door clicked shut behind us.  My immediate thoughts were that I didn’t want to mess this up and or us to fail. And I certainly didn’t want to let Keeley down.

On entry there is an initial clue to get you going. With hindsight it was probably the simplest but it did make us sweat a bit. And then we were off. The first puzzle solved allowed us access to a computer keyboard which we would use to enter codes and passwords.

There were many objects in the room, mounted on the walls as well as boxes/cubes on the floor each with a hole to enable you blindly explore by touch. There was a sort of jigsaw puzzle to assemble on a wall. All of the objects were clues, or parts of clues, to enable you to unlock several, four I think, combination padlocks. Which in turn gave access to more objects / clues. There were also several hotel style safes. Each requiring a code to be entered to gain access to more clues.

We had been warned that our sense of time passing would be totally messed up. That we might struggle with a puzzle thinking we had wasted 10 minute when in fact only 2 minutes had passed. When the TV screen wasn’t giving clues it invariably showed the clock counting down.

Did I mention that we only had one hour to solve the room?

When the counter was down to five minutes I became aware of a clock ticking. This just added to the tension, served as a distraction, and injected a degree of panic.

Well, we did escape! With around two minutes to spare!

Did I enjoy it? Yes!

Would I do another one? Yes!

One thing I noticed was the difference in the way that Keeley and I think. There were elements of the problems that Keeley was more adept at solving, she was definitely more intuitive.  But then there were instances where I was the one to take charge.

It was definitely a team effort and very enjoyable.

Thank you to The Real Escape for providing this experience.

But, most of all, thank you Keeley for arranging and sharing this experience 🥰

The day didn’t end here. Keeley drove us home to pick up Gerry and then, later in the afternoon, we headed out to The Forge for a Sunday carvery roast. When all three of us were feeling pleasantly plumptious we headed home. A fitting end to the day.