Good Morning, Angels

On a rather wet day in July, the newly reformed Team Angel (with team member Blech having checked himself into hospital to avoid dashing around Covent Garden!) managed to find each other inside the London Transport Museum for the start of the London Transport Museum Flickr Scavenger Hunt.

Clue 1 lulled us quickly into a wonderful false sense of security.. Eliza Doolittle moved out in 1974 only to be replaced with Frank Pick, and Harry Beck. Obvious! It was the London Transport Museum itself



Clue 2, A tiled sign where Neal and James meet on a long piece of land seemed equally easy (seemed being the important word to remember here). We knew just where Neal St, St James Street and Long Acre met, and with a quick stop to complete challenge 1, we stood outside covent Garden Station, with its beautifilly tiled signage, and ran off to take a photo of one of the mosaic space invaders that can be found all round London.. Yes yes.. It seems obvious now that all the answers were London Transport related, but at the time, under the pressure, it didn't!!



The answer to Clue 3, Once you could alight here for treasures of the Empire, now you
can only open an account nationwide came quickly, the old museum station! So, with a quick detour via MacDonalds for the use of their toilets (thankyou MacDonalds, I will love you forever for your reliably clean loo's!) we were faced with a very clean buiding which didn't look like it could have ever been a station. Luckily, Google and Wikipedia came to our rescue, and verified we were at the building we were looking for!



Luckily, Clue 4, The tracks lead to a secret underground tram world in Southampton, was a simple one. But, it did result in Mondoagogo dropping her crib sheet through the bars in search of the perfect shot, never to be retreived. The shot was worth it though..



A moment of inspiration from Mondoagogo led us quickly to the answer of Clue 5, Roses are red, Violets are blue, Holden loved this station, so should you! when she realised that both the Central line and the Piccadilly lines ran through Holborn



This was the point that Fimb had to give up and mooch off to a Starbucks. The 6th team member she is incubating took its toll, but the rest of the team were still full of energy and grabbed Clue 6, A cabin with a difference near a sacred station in double quick time



Clue 7, This station is behind the riverside bandstand was another quick answer



Clue 8, The back of Charing Cross station gave everyone a nice rest from the pain of cryptic clues, though discussions were had on whether or not they meant the actual back of the station, or just the back entrance



It might be best just to rush past Clue 9, An underground circle in a square. Oysters love this place!. It turns out, the brains of the team, Mondoagogo, knew the answer but had been ignored.. but, to the rest, Strand station seemed to be answer.. well, it was a station, once, on the circle line, and well, the strand is famous for oysters.. no?



So, who's idea was it to include a clue that would make everyone sing?? Clue 10, Where Terry and Julie cross over the river



Clue 11, Sounds like they're looking closely at the riverside was the final, and yet another controversial one.. While it was thought we hadn't got it, we had.. the whole pier Vs peer thing had thrown us!



The Challenges were the most fun. We got Challenge 1 early on in the day. Walking towards Covent Garden station we spotted a fantastic living statue, very brass like. But in true London fashion, it was surrounded by tourists, so we dashed up the road and chose what, it has to be said, was a rather second class statue! The cheesy grin from a certain member of the team was rather over doing the excitement level I think!



Challenge 2 lead to much over excitement.. might have been less had there been a greater understanding of the word modal (at least a new word was learnt by most of us), but still we all snapped away at every roundel we saw..




Fimb tried to make herself useful while skiving in Starbucks, by helping out with Challenge 3, and came out via the cab rank outside. Her cabbie was thrilled to be asked, and gave a big smile and was SO proud. The one the other guys found though was slightly, well, stranger. First he tried to charge for the photo, then insisted on repeating how he didn't drink (honest guvnor), and finally admitted he was lost..



The final part of the day, Challenge 4 was just crying out for using the sepia setting..



We finally all made it back to the museum.. where it was discovered we had a wireless network, and the answers were given to many doh's and yays!!