Caythorpe scouts play real-life Monopoly on the streets of London

A village scouts group visited London to play a real-life game of Monopoly with thousands of others.

Bright and early on Saturday March 4, 16 members of 1st Caythorpe and Duke’s Covert Scout Troop, accompanied by their leaders, were excitedly waiting at Grantham Station for the 06:58 to Kings Cross.

By 09:15 the group had navigated its way to the London Eye at Jubilee Park, ready to start playing Monopoly Run Live, an event billed as “an action-packed day visiting all corners of London”.

Over 8,000 scouts and guides from across the UK participated in the event, with 200 simultaneous Monopoly games taking place, pitting each team against seven others.

In total, 1,386 teams were playing at the same time, four of them from Caythorpe.

All of this was managed by a bespoke app that guided players to specific locations on the Monopoly Board streets, set various challenges and a quiz, and kept pinging when players received rent or had to pay rent when they visited a location that had already been bought by a team within their game.

For many of the younger Caythorpe scouts, aged 10 and 11, it was their first time in London, and a very different experience from their regular scouting activities such as camping and cooking on open fires.

They quickly learnt new skills including navigating the London Underground, working out the London Bus routes, map reading and pacing themselves.

After a long and incredibly active day walking around 20km, the four Caythorpe teams congregated at Leicester Square before heading back to Kings Cross, via a pit-stop at McDonalds, and home to Grantham.

The Caythorpe teams came in first, second, third and fifth places in their game.