Locked in Torquay: Why escape rooms are becoming Torbay’s most unexpected night out

Why would you pay good money to be locked in a room for an hour?

That’s what I was asking myself as the key turned in the lock at The Bunker’s new escape room, situated opposite Torquay Police station. The Bunker, for those that don’t know, is a multi-purpose indoor activities centre, which I wrongly presumed was just a climbing wall centre, but is in fact, a place where you can do all sorts of other things.  They have a Pilates class, you can play board games, enjoy their café, or even use their gym, which at £20 a month is probably the cheapest in Torbay. There are plans to open a ‘Rage Room’ – which is basically a room full of stuff you can smash up with a pickaxe, and which I can imagine a lot of people feeling the need for at the moment.

The idea, though, that you’d want to pay to try and escape from a room, as something that is ‘fun’ seemed less appealing to me. I understand that such rooms are commonly used by companies for team-building exercises, and I totally see how this kind of forced situation could well teach you who copes well under pressure, who the leaders are, and who are the team players? But would I give up my own weekend time to do something like this, which I imagined would be frustrating and stressful? Well, it turns out, that after last week the answer is ‘yes’. 

The concept of escape rooms has been around since about 2004 and can be traced back to the video game "Crimson Room," created by Japanese developer Toshimitsu Takagi in 2004. This browser-based game involved players solving puzzles to escape a locked room, sparking interest in similar challenges. The success of "Crimson Room" laid the groundwork for the real-life escape room phenomenon that followed, and it has definitely been a phenomenon. There are apparently 685 escape rooms in the UK, with more opening all the time. However, we currently only have two in Torbay. One at the Bunker, and the more established HQ Escape Rooms, which is also in Torquay. In the interests of research, I tried both out, recruiting some friends, who I selected on the basis that I would not mind being locked up all night with them if we failed to solve the puzzle and escape.

We first visited The Bunker, which on first glance was not obvious it had this escape room. It’s long been a place for serious indoor ‘climbers’ and when I arrived it was full of younger people using the walls, while flashing disco lights and music played. However, since taking over, owner Alan Gardiner has developed the space into all sorts of other uses, adapting to suit a market which is no doubt challenging all year round. ‘I’ve done escape rooms before, and I love creating them.’ He told me,  ‘I hope to attract corporate clients, but to be honest we have got groups of people of all ages and demographics enjoying the experience. There are some people who literally tour round finding new escape rooms to challenge them, but they are great for anyone who wants to do something different for example for a birthday, and they suit numbers of anything between two to a maximum of twelve.’ 

His current escape room has a 1930’s Agatha Christie style theme to it. I am told that it’s common to have a ‘theme’ everything from a rescue mission to a haunted schoolhouse, or Egyptian explorers. Knowing this theme though I invited three actor friends from Toads Theatre company as I thought they might offer some insight that might help us. It turns out that ‘life experience’ doesn’t count for all that much, but having done an escape room before, does definitely give you an advantage.

We were taken upstairs through a corridor my friend, Amber, described as being like a ‘European sex-dungeon’ (I don’t know how she knows). We then entered the ‘escape room’, that actually could have been from a Poirot TV show. It was small, but decorated in an early 20-century style, with a desk, several chairs, and bookshelves. At the start we were told we had an hour to solve a murder and then given very little guidance, about how we were actually meant to solve this alleged murder or how to go about it.

Luckily two of my friends Jolyon and Thea, had done this before and immediately started ransacking the room, turning chairs upside down, looking under furniture and riffling through clothes that were hanging up. Amber and I stood on looking intrigued, but it turns out the method is to find clues, which then lead onto more clues, and these are not always in any where obvious. 

I won’t, of course, reveal too much about this challenge, as I hope you’ll go onto enjoy it. However, let me just say, in the following half hour, we had to unlock safes, were scrabbling round in the dark with a torch, and were examining suspicious white stains on the floor, while also eventually finding several pieces of a torn up will, which we had to piece them together to understand who the suspects could be. You are given a radio, which should you choose to, you can ask for clues from Alan, but we were determined not to do that. I was disproportionately excited to find a book somewhere unusual which had a key in it.

I am thrilled to say we eventually did work out who the killer was but only were successful by putting their name into a padlock with letters on, which was fiendishly hard to use. Our time was 43 minutes, but I have to tell you, so busy were the four of us trying to work it all out, that I felt we had only been in there about 20 minutes. The whole thing was really exciting, and you get a real thrill of satisfaction as you work out each clue and then manage to triumph within the hour deadline. Alan told me the quickest team’s time so far is 23 minutes, so do go and try and see if you can beat that. 

I certainly had that in mind when two days later Amber and I and two other friends Stewart and Sarah, arrived at the HQ Escape Rooms, situated on the Terrace in Torquay, just up the hill, from the back of Hoopers. These rooms are run by Jo Ward, who has been designing escape rooms since 2018. They aren’t easy to find, so give yourself an extra five minutes to locate the venue. However, once you are in there it’s wonderfully immersive and clearly a lot of thought has gone into the whole experience. She has several themed rooms, but the one we were going to try was an Arthur Conan Doyle/Sherlock Holmes one, although I should make it clear you need no knowledge whatsoever of the Holmes stories to succeed in the room. 

To suit the period, we were not given a radio, this time, but instead could ring an old-fashioned bell for clues, should we need them. Again, the room was decorated in the period, but this time with pictures of Doyle and mysterious bottles of chemicals. Once the door was closed, we set about trying to work as a team. I don’t mind admitting if I had been left to solve this particularly mystery by myself, I would still be in that room this week. Luckily my friends have the sorts of brains that can work logically and look at things in an unobvious way. 

Again, so not to spoil it for future-users, I’ll give little away. However, this room needed far less physical searching for clues and far more direct brain power. We found a periodic table that had be used as a clue. At one stage, we went round frantically counting moustaches and there was also writing that had to be held up to a light to give an answer. Just like we had to find pieces of a will over at the Bunker, here we kept finding parts of a map, which once we found them all, revealed a number which could be used on a padlock. 

We manged a still respectable 45 minutes, but again, it felt like we’d barely been in there. Time flies…and all that. This room was, to my mind more challenging, but no less enjoyable. However, I was certainly glad I had the others, and on each occasion we all contributed to the result, which I guess is the point of it. Certainly, my preconceptions of what an escape room is, was totally wrong, and if this sounds like the sort of thing you’d enjoy as a group, go to both these places. Jo from HQ Escape Rooms, told me she has people who book the rooms for a first date. I am not sure I’d be confident enough to do that. But perhaps the person booking is hoping they won’t escape? 

Full details of The Bunker can be found at www.theboulderbunker.com The Escape rooms costs £13 for adults and £10 for under 14s. Tel 01802 293229.

HQ Escape Rooms can be booked at: www.hqescaperooms.com and costs £20 for adults and £15 for under 16s (dogs welcome) Tel: 07939228254​