‘A great way of getting under the skin of a city’: the rise of urban treasure hunts

Treasure hunt participants are likely to see things in a city they’ve never spotted before. Photograph: Gary Calton/The Guardian

If you spot someone in a busy city centre street with a puzzled, possibly pained look asking their companions whether that’s an elephant at the top of a drainpipe, they are probably not mad – but on an urban treasure hunt.

There has been, one city tourism boss said, an “explosion” in the number and popularity of treasure and scavenger hunts in the UK.