Poundbury Patients Group Summer Holiday Chimney Challenge
CHIMNEY SPOTTING CHALLENGE
INSTRUCTIONS
Poundbury Doctors’ Surgery PPG (Patient Participation Group aka ‘Poundbury Patients Group’) has come up with a fun and interesting activity for you to do over the holidays.
- You need to record your steps walking around the centre of Poundbury on a ‘stepometre’ free app like Google Fit or similar.
- Either print out or use the map on your phone which links to a Google Docs document located at: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1L-IeaYtbPXgV3b35KrX030VUIQSDEcqB9-qvWZKt-PY/edit?ts=60e0c560
- Walk around Poundbury looking for unusual chimneys. (Each of the nine chimneys will match up to one of the locations on the map), starting point near Poundbury Doctors’ Surgery (PDS).
- The activity should take approximately one hour, but do make the activity last longer with a nice stop off at one of the many coffee shops located around Poundbury!
- When done, record your chimneys to the correct location point on the document in Google Docs
- There is a prize for everyone!
- Gold award for 9 corrrect answers
- Sapphire award for 8 correct answers
- Ruby award for 7 correct answers
- Coral award for 6 correct answers
- Pearl award for 5 correct answers
- Silver award for 4 correct answers
- Bronze award for 3 correct answers
- Copper award for 2 correct answers
- Iron award for 1 correct answers
A note from someone who has road-tested this challenge
All I can say really is don’t make the mistake we did: we stupidly decided not to read the instructions and to look for Chimney 1 – 9 in locations A-I but to try and correspond chimney 1 to point A, failing the instruction at the first hurdle that said: ‘Your challenge, if you choose to accept it, is to work out which chimney is in which location.’
And there we have it: we did not accept our challenge and went on a wild goose chase. 45 minutes later, with a mini-row about why we were in Blagdon Road (which is not ‘technically’ a part of Poundbury) and having identified the chimney we needed but were not looking at the right page… I came up with an idea. I know! This one must be Brownsword Hall, I think I recognise it!…So off we march to Brownsword Hall only to identify that it doesn’t in fact even have a chimney…
The more exuberant half of me decided we should go and carry on the route and look for other chimneys since we had failed chimney 1, and living near Brownsword Hall I was already ready for coffee (it had started raining) but the other half persevered. By the time we ‘walked’ a somewhat random route, we had in fact scanned the other chimneys on the guide so we at least knew what to look for. Then, out of nowhere a shining beacon befell us: “LOOK! There’s the chimney we were looking for!” cries the exuberant half. I think I actually guffawed; and then burst into floods of laughter. For this shining beacon was absolutely nowhere near where we had expected it to be – and we’d found it mostly by luck than any sense of judgement.
So this ensued a conversation, an actual read of the document, and then we were flying. We found two in close proximity and by this time the hilarity levels were a bit too much for me to take… I tentatively suggested coffee… it was welcomed as an idea. The sun was coming out; things were looking infinitely brighter. Rather than our intellectual ability.
Two more chimneys and we were away, but by this point I needed the toilet. The coffee was calling and we had pretty much walked the route and were according to the exuberant half recording our steps – almost three miles in. That was enough for me, and the bairn had lost interest after listening to the all the adulting about chimney recognition and throwing stones and winding up the exuberant half. Losing interest after about an hour and a three quarters was good enough for me, and we’d found five chimneys, right?
The coffee was good (and the pavilion gym equipment motivated munchkin) whilst the sun properly came out. But it was not long before a big black cloud descended upon us. Our moment to shine had passed and we safely made it inside before the downpour. I conceded that I wasn’t going to get a certificate (original document you only received a certificate for all nine chimneys). This has now been amended and as you will see overleaf, there is a scalar system for just five chimneys….we won the Pearl Award, right? Munchkin was overly happy with her certificate; we’ve proudly displayed it on her bedroom door. I might have printed one for my bedroom door too…
All in all, a fluffed exercise, but certainly provided us with lots of laughs.