Treasure Trail ends with a £700 prize for the Dean family from St Austell

A LUCKY St Austell family is celebrating an unexpected 2010 windfall after scooping more than £700 in the Treasure Trail annual regional competition.

The Dean family, including children Isabella, eight, and William, 12, earned their prize after quite literally pounding some miles on a set of fascinating walks around Mevagissey which they took with the help of Treasure Trails.

Treasure Trails has created a host of unique murder mystery, treasure hunt and spy mission trails all over the UK.

The routes get people of all ages outside, exploring their local area and having lots of fun while learning intriguing new facts about their surroundings.

In order to solve the mystery, trailers take the route of their choice and follow the easy instructions to hunt out answers to clues which they discover on buildings, structures and monuments.

As each walking trail is roughly two miles long, they also get beneficial exercise while learning a whole range of exciting new facts about their town, or the place they are visiting, and seeing the most beautiful and interesting places in that area.

To find out if they have solved the trail correctly trailers submit their answer online and 25p for every Cornwall trail sold goes into a prize fund which is won by one lucky Cornish person every year.

This year Julian Dean and his family correctly submitted the answer to the Mevagissey Trail and were drawn out of the hat as the delighted regional winners.

Julian said: "We love going out together as a family, but sometimes find it hard to keep everyone happy and interested. I'm sure all families are the same.

"The Mevagissey Treasure Trail was brilliant because everyone got involved and we saw some interesting parts of the town that we never knew existed.

"The children absolutely loved solving the clues and we all got to have a nice walk together with loads of fresh air. There are not many family days out that you can have for just a fiver."

Treasure Trails was started by Steve Ridd in 2005, to get local people out and about exploring the beautiful and historical places Cornwall, and the rest of the UK, has to offer.

The company now has over 380 Treasure Trails across the whole of the UK and gave away nearly £5,000 this year in prizes. Log on to www.treasuretrails.co.uk to find out more.