Fowey’s new mystery walk turns the town into an escape room

Somewhere in Fowey’s narrow streets a spy has hidden a cipher, and a fleet of pirates is already crossing the Channel to find out whether anyone can break it in time.

The story behind the walk

A spy has infiltrated Fowey and locked its defences away behind a code now known only to the pirates. Fortunately, the spy’s own notebook has turned up, and it holds the clues to the cipher. The job is to explore the town, work through those clues, and break the code before Fowey is raided.

How the Mystery Walk works

iWalk Cornwall has built the route as a self-guided outdoor escape room. Rather than following fixed directions from the start, walkers use the app to solve a series of puzzles as they go, and each one unlocks the next stretch of the route. It is the same cipher-cracking, notebook-clue format as an indoor escape room, just spread out across the streets and quaysides of the town rather than inside a locked room.

The route: 2.9 miles, graded moderate

The Fowey Mystery Walk covers 2.9 miles and is graded moderate. Full details, including how to get hold of the walk itself, are on iWalk Cornwall’s website.