You don’t actually get to race across the world by participating in City Days’ ‘live experience’ based on the hit BBC show. But you do get to race across Manchester. In Burnham’s Britain, perhaps that amounts to the same thing?
Certainly, the trail shows off the best of the current capital of the universe, particularly on a sunny summer Sunday afternoon with the streets humming with the chatter of outdoor diners and daytime drinkers. As a Liverpudlian who remembers the somewhat less hipster Manchester city centre of the 1990s, Race Across the World: The Experience was, among other things, a guided tour in how far our neighbour has come.
The race experience itself, which is also available in various other UK cities including York and London, consists primarily of a series of clues delivered via WhatsApp that leads participants through three legs to a final checkpoint and the chance to sign in and compare times with a selection of previous teams. Without getting into details that would spoiler the quest, the Manchester version begins near Stevenson Square in the Northern Quarter.
Race Across the World in Manchester. Copyright Northern Soul.
A race pack is collected and an initial puzzle using the contents of the pack needs solving before setting off on foot, following either a cheaper or more expensive and efficient set of WhatsApp clues (depending on your attitude to the virtual race budget). Each leg ends in a particular venue, where another pack is collected and another puzzle solved. As in the TV show, teams can choose to ‘work’ along the way to boost their coffers, in this case by solving phone-based riddles, at the expense of slower race times.
Prior to setting out, we chose the family-friendly option which organisers said made no difference to the route but meant that the checkpoints (though bars) were suitable for our youngest racer (age seven). Alongside him we had three tweenage girls in our party – longstanding fans of the BBC show and ardent fans of the latest winners, scouse teenagers Jo and Kush – and four 40-somethings, and the puzzles and clues were pitched well to engage us all. There was a lot of staring at phones, inevitably given the format, but this was mitigated by good ol’ fashioned teamwork, the odd healthy difference of opinion and something in the region of five kilometres walked by the time we arrived, mildly sweaty after a roughly three-hour expedition, at our finish line.
En route, the WhatsApp clues took us to some of Manchester’s most historically and culturally important places, with regular snippets of local information thrown in along with directions. While interest in these waned after a while, RATW would be an excellent way to show off the city to visitors from other regions, while the locals among us said that the experience had made them “fall in love” with their home town again. Even the scouse tweens talked more about Manchester than Jo and Kush on the way home. While we beat the competition on our own RAWT, perhaps the city was the real winner.
Main image courtesy of Race Across the World
