aendr

Yesterday I spent all day running (well, actually walking fast, waiting for buses, bussing and tubing) around London playing "Tubeopoly" against other teams from Cambs West Guides. Paxton Power Rangers put in 2 teams, there were 11 teams in total. The game involves travelling around the Monopoly board to find the answers to various questions - one for each Monopoly square not including the utilities. We also had to attend the checkpoints of "Go" and "Jail". Most squares were worth 10 points, though some harder to get to ones were worth 20. Getting to the checkpoint in the 1 hour slot allotted for each of them was worth 10 points with a further 10 possible by answering a set of questions given out at each checkpoint. We were given the questions and locations of the checkpoints on the train so that we could plan our routes. We had a great time and our two teams got really good scores, my team coming 2nd with 90 points and the other team getting 80 despite the getting lost on a bus for over an hour. I'm a bit disappointed that my route planning wasn't as good as it could have been but now have a few ideas on how to improve that. It can't be totally prepared as the checkpoints are not known in advance, nor which end of some streets, but a lot of it can be which would give us a better chance of winning. I'm feeling a bit bad for not giving the girls more of a chance at planning and reading but they were very reluctant. I think it might be good to do something on a smaller scale somewhere they partly know to get their in-town map reading confidence a bit of a boost.

Make sure all teams know how to use an A-Z and do so (pointed look at the other team). In advance make a list of page numbers and grid squares for each Monopoly location for each A-Z. This will save a lot of time on the train. Try to make sure the A-Zs are the good ones with house numbers on the bigger roads - some of the questions included the house number e.g. "If you were artistically minded you might call at 44a Pentonville Road"

Get hold of central London bus maps for each team in advance and mark on the various Monopoly locations. This is a very useful at a glance map for proximity of the places which are on different A-Z pages and for transportation, but the smaller roads aren't always marked on it. If we use coloured sticky dots then once one is done it can be ticked off on the map by ticking on the dot. Take some spare stickers for marking the checkpoints. Numbering the out-of-order questions and transferring the numbers to this map would also be handy for finding the question quickly. Also, note on the map which buses have poor service on Sundays (if it's on a Sunday.)

Take a good pen and a couple of highlighters.

Foldable clipboards or something else to keep the stuff flat, dry and accessible would be handy, especially if it's windy or rainy (we had really good weather.)

Check out events, tube and bus closures in advance. There was a cycle ride which affected bus routes a couple of times. Eid affected access to the Whitechapel Road Mosque