Team Bank's Blog - The Fail Whale's Favourite Team

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 02:32:00 GMT

On a fairly wet day in July, our team set out to answer all 11 clues in the London Transport Museum Flickr Scavenger Hunt - there were also some bonus challenges to solve. The answers to the clues weren't all stations but as it was part of the London Festival of Architecture we expected that our photographic answers ought to show buildings of some description.

Fortunately we didn't have to go south of the river for any of the answers as I'm sure some of us would have got "cabbie" fever and said "Nah - we don't go south of the river" and we had to start at the location of the first clue - otherwise the world was our ... err.. Oyster.

Clue 1 was our first clue "Once you could alight here for treasures of the Empire, now you can only open an account nationwide"

Our first mistake was spending too long in the Museum trying to work out the answer to each clue before we left. Our second mistake was listening to me "It's obviously the Empire nightclub in Leicester Square as there's a Nationwide cashpoint next to it", I said.

There is a cashpoint next door to the Empire Leicester Square, and we didn't let the fact it wasn't a "Nationwide" ATM get in the way of that.

Needless to say when we got back to the ranch we discovered we were wrong! Big FAIL - The Twitter Fail Whale would have been proud.

Next clue : "A tiled sign where Neal and James meet on a long piece of land"

Loads easier we thought - Neal Street and James Street meet on Long Acre - all we needed was a tiled sign.

Plenty of tiles on Covent Garden Station, so result. We got that one right.

Clue 3 - Eliza Doolittle moved out in 1974 only to be replaced with Frank Pick and Harry Beck.

We went on a bit of a detour here, thinking it was to do with My Fair Lady the musical which used to play at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane. So we took some nice pictures around there

But couldn't really find anything to do with Frank Pick or Harry Beck. So we thought for a bit longer. Then I had a brainwave (strange I know) and thought maybe it's nothing to do with the musical but with Covent Garden Flower Market itself, where Eliza Doolittle sold flowers and where the London Transport Museum now lived. Result - it was the Museum itself.

Onto Clue 4 - "The tracks lead to a secret underground tram world in Southampton" Another one we did OK at. There are some tram lines on Southampton Row, so we sped - well more like ambled - over to Southampton Row to take the pictures

There was even a bit of iron-worky looking architecture in the background.

Onto the next clue "Roses are red, Violets are blue, Holden loved this station, so should you" - We cocked up here. It had to be a station designed by Holden and I stupidly thought that Covent Garden was a Holden one. Yeah I know now it's by Leslie Green (where were you when we needed you?), and was also convinced there were some roses in the tiles there. There weren't. So that was another one with a big FAIL next to it.

Clue 6 - we did much better at "A cabin with a difference near a sacred station".

Cabbies have those little green huts dotted around London where they have tea and Lori knew that there was one near Temple Tube Station. So we jumped on the Tube and found it.

This was also where we grabbed our first challenge picture - a Typical London Cabbie

He wasn't exactly typical as he was smiling (sort of) and didn't put the clock on the minute we stopped to speak to him. But he was kind enough to let us take his picture - so thanks Mr Typical London Cabbie.

Next clue "This station is behind the riverside bandstand". Really easy this one. There's a bandstand just behind Embankment Tube station, so we took a few pictures there:

Next clue - The back of Charing Cross Station. Not much cryptic about that.

Clue 9 seemed to throw a lot of people, including us momentarily. "An underground circle in a square. Oysters love this place". Pete thought it was to do with the statues in Leicester Square. But in the end we went with my theory of it being the circular control room in Leicester Square. Although try as we might we couldn't find a good view of it with an Oyster card in it too.

But imajes' picture above captures some nice movement and is clearly circular.

Clue 10 - Where Terry and Julie cross over the river - another one we found quickly. Terry & Julie being the actors Terrence Stamp and Julie Christie from the classic Kinks song, Waterloo Sunset. Waterloo Bridge looked nice now that the rain had cleared

"As long as they gaze at Waterloo Sunset they are in paradise"

Final clue, I'll admit that we got by accident. "Sounds like they're looking closely at the riverside".

We were thinking "Sound of Music". We were thinking telescope and how you could look at something over the river. But it was actually Embankment Pier. Pier sounds like "peer", geddit. Mmmm - we didn't, but we had some pictures of Embankment Pier, so here they are.

Finally we close with the remainder of our challenge pictures

We had to re-create an image on the Strand near the Museum

Take our word for it - it was an excellent re-creation of the original shot.

Then there was the group shot next to a living statue:

Look how happy everyone, well most of us, are.

However we also FAILED at the largest collection of modal roundels - mainly because we didn't understand it and read it as model roundels. Easy mistake to make, we hope you won't hold that against us.

So please vote for us (scroll back up the top right of this page and you'll find the poll button). We hope we entertained you and that we made failing a bit fun! We really appreciate you getting this far with the post. KThxbai

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