Treasure hunt

Turn a real park, garden, campsite or your own street into a pirate treasure map. Place the clues, print the map and the clue cards, hide them, and let the hunters follow the trail to the X. For birthday parties, scouts, classrooms and family days out.

Where is the hunt?

Drag and zoom: the bright box is the map. 150 m to 2 km across works best, about a 10 to 40 minute walk.

Or start from an example

Name of the hunt

The stops

Suggest spots picks benches, playgrounds, statues, fountains, picnic tables, gates and big trees from OpenStreetMap, away from roads and water. Always walk the route first and check every spot is safe on the day.

Who is hunting?

Riddles on the clue cards

Hunters' names, for their certificates

One certificate each. Leave it empty for one with a blank line to write on.

The map

On the map

Shape

Draw the route as a dashed line A ship and a sea monster on big water

Leave the route off so the hunters have to read the map. Colour it in prints black lines only, to colour with pencils before the hunt.

Printing

Paper

Map poster

Clue cards on a page

A note on each card saying where to hide it

Download

The PDF has the map, the clue cards, a certificate for each hunter and the organiser's sheet with every spot, distance and a photo checklist.

Free for personal, school, club and party use, and for selling up to $5,000 a year with a TerraPrinter credit. Bigger sellers need a commercial license. Keep the map data credit. License

3D-printed map tile optional

Width

The ground in relief with the paths raised and the X engraved, in three colours (ground, water, paths), or one STL.

Your hunt stays in this browser: the spots are kept only in this page's link, never on our server.

How the treasure hunt works

A real place, drawn by hand

The paths, streets, water, woods and buildings come from OpenStreetMap and are drawn like an old pirate map: wobbly ink lines, parchment, a compass rose, and a ship and a sea monster on any big enough lake.

Clues that lead the way

Each card points to the next spot: what to look for, where to look, and which way to walk. The steps are counted for the age, from big steps for little explorers to compass bearings and paces for master pirates.

Safe spots

Suggested spots are things a child can find and touch: benches, playgrounds, statues, gates and big trees, never on a road, at the water's edge, inside a building or on private land. You still know the place best: check every spot before the day.

Private by design

The hunt is made in your browser and kept only in the page's link. Share the link with the spots only with your helpers, or a version without them with anyone.

Map data: © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL). Elevation for the 3D tile: Copernicus DEM GLO-30 (© DLR e.V. & Airbus) and Mapzen Terrain Tiles on AWS. Map © OpenStreetMap contributors, © CARTO. Walking times are estimates. More to make: a paper model of the same place, wall maps, or more 3D map gift ideas.