iWalk Cornwall launches a new Mevagissey Mystery Walk

The key to Mevagissey’s feast has gone missing on a fishing boat in the harbour. The only snag is that nobody knows which of the fifty boats it’s on, and the food stays locked away until someone works it out.

That’s the setup for the newest addition to iWalk Cornwall’s Mystery Walks, a self-guided outdoor escape room called Mevagissey: Key to the Feast. You explore the village on foot, solve puzzles to unlock each step of a walking route, and track down the lost key before, as the story puts it, the feast becomes a fast.

What the Mystery Walks are

Each Mystery Walk is part outdoor escape room, part mystery tour, built as a social day out for family or a friend. It runs on a mobile app and it’s entirely self-guided, so you can start whenever it suits you.

Every walk has a story with an overall mystery to solve. To move forward, you crack puzzles that unlock the next direction on the route. You won’t know where you’re heading at the start, but each step comes with detailed, well-tested walking directions and a live map showing where you are, which way you’re facing, and where you’re going next. As the route unfolds it takes you through historic corners of the village, often with wide sea views, and the puzzles slowly build a set of clues that come together at the end.

The puzzles are pitched mainly at adults, though children may enjoy spotting clues and helping with the easier ones. They mix words, numbers, logic and observation, and every puzzle has a ladder of hints running from tricky down to very easy, so a group of mixed abilities can all get involved. It isn’t a race, so there’s time to stop for photos or refreshments and make a day of it.

Once a walk is downloaded it runs completely offline using GPS, with no phone signal or data needed. iWalk Cornwall describes it as “Cornwall-proof”.

The Mevagissey route

The Mevagissey walk covers 2 miles (3.6 km) and takes around two to three hours, with 41 puzzles along the way.

• Distance: 2 miles / 3.6 km
• Time: roughly 2 to 3 hours
• Puzzles: 41
• Steepness: moderate

The route has a short climb on a moderately steep path mid-way, a steep flight of steps up from the harbour near the end followed by a short climb on the road, and a descent on a flight of metal steps. It isn’t suitable for wheels, and there are notes on bringing dogs on the app’s FAQ.

One thing to keep in mind: in very strong easterly winds the piers may be closed, and the app has built-in workarounds so you can still complete the walk if a section is out of reach.

What it costs and how to get it

A Mevagissey mystery is £14.99, and that’s per group rather than per person. Only one download is needed for the whole group, so the price is shared and you can pick whoever has the best phone for the job (a bright screen for outdoors and decent battery life help). You can do the whole thing in a day or split it across two.

To get started, download the Mystery Walks in Cornwall app from the App Store or Google Play, then browse and buy the mysteries inside the app.

Mevagissey joins a growing list of Mystery Walks across Cornwall, with others available in Boscastle, Bude, Falmouth, Looe, Newquay, Padstow, Penzance, Perranporth, Port Isaac, Porthleven, St Ives and Tintagel.