Treasure Hunt: A Cycling Adventure You Can’t Plan For

Somewhere along some of WillCycle’s traffic-free routes, there are stickers hidden. It has been placed there deliberately, in a spot that requires effort to reach. It won’t appear on any map. Nobody is going to tell you where it is. And the first WillCycler to find it and send proof will have their first name displayed on that route page.

This is the WillCycle treasure hunt. And it is, genuinely, one of the most enjoyable things I’ve built into the site.

If that sounds like your kind of adventure, read on. If you’re already reaching for your cycling shoes, you’ll want to know that the treasure hunt is a feature exclusive to WillCycle members (WillCyclers) but I’ll get to that.

How it works

The treasure hunt is simple in concept and deliberately difficult in practice. Here’s the sequence:

1. A physical sticker is hidden somewhere along a WillCycle route, either by me, or a volunteer. The hiding spot is logged in the system, but the coordinates are never shared with anyone, ever.
2. A cryptic hint appears on the route page. Vague enough to be a challenge, but specific enough to point you in a general direction.
3. You tap “Start the Hunt” on the route page, and your phone begins tracking your proximity as you ride.
4. As you get closer, an indicator on your screen tells you whether you’re getting warmer or colder. It has four states: Cold, Warm, Hot, and Very Close. The exact distance is never shown, just the Cold, Warm, Hot, or Very Close state.
5. When you find the sticker, you photograph it on the spot (if you photograph it further than 50 metres away, it won’t count!) Your GPS position is captured at the moment you submit, and checked server-side to confirm you were actually there.
6. The photo goes to moderation. If everything checks out, your find is approved, and your first name appears on the route page as the person who found it. Yay! Bragging rights!
7. There is no second place. Once it’s found, the hunt for that specific treasure is over.

The bit that makes it genuinely hard

The hot/cold system sounds straightforward until you’re actually on a bike, in a wood, trying to work out whether ‘Hot’ means the sticker is behind the fence on your left, tucked under the bridge you just crossed, or attached to something you rode straight past twenty seconds ago.

The proximity bands are deliberately wide. ‘Hot’ means within 50 metres, which, on a traffic-free trail with vegetation either side, is a sizeable search area. You’ll need to slow down, look properly, and think about the hint.

The hints themselves are designed to reward local knowledge and careful reading. They won’t give the location away outright, but they’re not random either. There’s always a logic to them.

And because the coordinates are only ever checked server-side – your phone never receives them – there’s no way to cheat by inspecting the page source or intercepting the data. You have to go and look.

Why I built this

The honest answer is that WillCycle has always been about making cycling more of an adventure. The route guides, the navigation, the achievement badges – all of it is aimed at the same thing: turning a perfectly good bike ride into something you’ll actually remember.

The treasure hunt came from a simple observation: the best rides tend to have a destination, or a purpose, or a small mystery that gives you a reason to look more carefully at the world around you. Most of the time that’s just the route itself, but occasionally it’s something extra.

Hiding a sticker somewhere along a traffic-free route and watching someone work out where it is from a series of cryptic clues and a thermal indicator is, it turns out, extremely good fun for everyone involved. Including the people at the other end trying to find it.

What happens after a treasure is found

Once a find is approved, a few things happen:

The route page gets a trophy banner, showing the date the treasure was found and the first name of the finder. It stays there, until I add a new treasure to the route, when your finder’s record moves to a list below the map. It’s a real record, in the real world, that someone was clever enough and determined enough to locate something deliberately hidden for them.

Community stats on the route page also show how many WillCyclers started the hunt before it was found. Depending on the treasure, it can be very satisfying knowing you beat so number to have beaten.

A word on privacy and safety

I take both very seriously. The photo you submit as proof of your find is reviewed by me, and used only to confirm the find. I ask specifically for a photo of the sticker itself, not the surrounding area, and definitely not you. Afterwards, I’ll delete the photo. After all, I don’t want unnecessary image clogging up my webserver.
GDPR compliance is built into the submission process by design, not as an afterthought.

Also, you don’t have to use your real name when registering. I’m not HMRC, and I won’t do any checks. If you want to register with your name as Mickey Mouse, that’s perfectly fine with me.

The GPS check at submission is done entirely on the server-side. Your coordinates are used to verify proximity and then discarded. They’re not stored, displayed, or shared, and I have no way of seeing them – not even if I wanted to (and I don’t want to).

How to take part

The treasure hunt is a WillCycler feature, available exclusively to paid members. Here’s what a WillCycler membership includes, beyond the treasure hunt:

If you’ve already cycled a WillCycle route – if one of my guides has taken you somewhere you wouldn’t have found otherwise – then a membership is how you make sure the site keeps doing that, and how you get a lot more from it in the process.

You can become a WillCycler by clicking here. There’s no contract, and you can cancel at any time.

One last thing

The treasure is waiting to be found.

Will YOU be the one to find it?