Ensors Beer Challenge
For many years I have heard about this mystical challenge that took place in Ipswich, but I had never really understood what it involved or had the opportunity to take part. This year was the year though! JM Finn needed some additional team members so I snapped up the opportunity to take part. I was however a last minute addition to the team and I turned up to the event with little knowledge of what to expect!
We met at the University where we were greeted by a sponsor for the night. The sponsors are all members of Ensors and their main aim is to help us win and buy the drinks for the rest of the night. This year there were 29 teams all made up of 5 people. We were initially taken to a table where we had snacks and welcome drinks before the fun really started!
Each team received a pack - this pack contains several things. The first mission was to decorate a Christmas Tree that was on each table. We were supposed to make a origami star (which you will see from the photo below was an epic fail), a paper chain and a cracker.
Before leaving the University we also had several picture rounds, anagrams and general knowledge questions to get through. In addition to these questions we had questions to answer on route to the pubs and also questions to complete at each pub. The twist is that answer sheets need to be handed in at 7.15 and 8.15 and 9.00.
If you submit the answer sheets at the earlier times you get triple points for your team. The other twist is that the submission point is always at the University. This means that if you have got to a pub further away you have to run back to the University to meet the timeframes.
Our first pub was the Brewery Tap - this was the furthest pub out so we decided to go there first. We quickly managed to complete the quiz questions and down out drinkies! Of course we had some time for some Christmas selfies. What you can't see in these photos is my amazing Christmas jumper. It has a big snowman on the front with a big orange nose. It also plays a round of jingle bells if pressed!
From here we wandered back down to the marina - as the next step was Cult Cafe Bar. There were so many teams on the street as we walked in that direction - everyone dressed up as elves, santa's and in Christmas attire. We had to be careful to not lose any of our answers on route to cheating teams.
We were slightly tipsy by this point and remember vividly that we thought the route to survival was a flapjack! We purchased a couple and they were literally the best flapjacks I had ever tasted. I will be re-visiting Cult Cafe to try these again one weekend. The flap jack came at the right time as I was up next to run the answer sheets back to the University. I sprinted like there was no tomorrow and then realised that the University really was only a few moments away from us. The answer sheets were submitted and triple points hopefully secured.
The run was certainly easier than trying to work out manually how many Christmas presents someone would receive during the full 12 days of Christmas. I spent ages manually counting it up. I ended up with 366 and was gutted to later find out the answer was 364!
Briarbank was the third pub on our tour. Here we also had to sing *We Wish you a very Christmas* to one of the judges. We didn't realise however that this has to be filmed - so we had to repeat the whole exercise in the following pub. We also realised at this point that we were never going to make it around all the pubs in the time frame if we had a long drink in each pub. We had to therefore resort to shots!
We made it finally to the Lord Nelson where we completed the balance of quiz questions before rushing back to the University for the 9pm deadline.
It seemed like we had to fit an awful lot of tasks, questions and pubs into such a short period of time. 9pm seemed very early for it to end, but on return to the University we were offered chilli and rice for dinner. It was much appreciated after being out in the cold weather.
Dinner also filled the space so the final score sheets could be calculated!
We were not holding out for the winning ticket - but were nicely surprised when we realised that we had come 9th out of 29 teams. This was quite a success - but I do believe Claire did lots of the questions on route so all praise really needs to go to her!
In summary the night is crazy! It is hard to explain, but if you love quizzes, love beer and love dressing up in silly costumes this is a night you should try out in the future!
