Miglia Quadrato
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The Miglia Quadrato is an annual car treasure hunt which takes place on the second or third weekend in May within the Square Mile of the City of London (the capital of the United Kingdom). It is organised by the United Hospitals and University of London Motoring Club (UHULMC). The event has a long history - the fiftieth event will take place in May 2009.
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[edit] History
The event was originally conceived in 1957 in response to the fuel shortages from the Suez Crisis. This meant that traditional car rallying was less viable due to fuel shortages and so concentrating a competition in the Square Mile would reduce distances covered.
In the early 1990s the Ring of steel was introduced to the City of London. This added a degree of complexity to navigation of the event, as it resulted in a limited number of entry and exit points for areas bordering Liverpool Street Station.
[edit] Format
The modern format is very simple. A team of up to six people in a car (or in the case of some teams, restored fire vehicles or carriages) drive around the city for five hours trying to find the answers to sixty clues. A point is scored for each clue answer correctly recorded. A point is lost for every minute the team is late at the end of the five hours.
A 1:10000 scale Ordnance Survey Landplan map of the city is provided, along with a sheet of the sixty clues. Each clue is an eight digit Ordnance Survey grid reference (which fixes a 10m by 10m area to search) and a quotation of some text or number that can be found at the location, with some parts missing, which need to be found and written down as the answer. There are no cryptic clues.
The hunt runs from midnight to 5am the following Sunday morning. With sixty clues to solve in five hours, there is an average of five minutes per clue, in which time the location must be plotted on the map, driven to, and the relevant text from the clue found. The clues can be visited in any order. There are 20 easy, 20 medium and 20 difficult clues. The easy ones are generally very obvious once the precise location has been reached. The difficult ones are hard enough to find in daylight, and even harder at night during the event, when one is relying on a torch for illumination.
There are no prizes apart from some small engraved plaques awarded to the highest scoring teams.
Teams are expected to take part in the spirit of the hunt - for instance, all team members are expected to stay together and, as far as possible, with their vehicle at all times and not collude with other teams.
In a typical year, the winning score is in the mid-fifties, with ties being separated by team-size (smallest wins) and then by relative scores for the difficult and medium clues respectively. Although the event has yet to see a team find correct answers to all of the clues in the allotted five hours, in 2007 three teams came close to producing the first clean sheet; one with a winning score of 58 (from a maximum possible score of only 59 due to a clue cancellation) and two runners-up teams with 57. Provisional scoring in 2008 awarded 56 points to the winning team and 55 points to the runners-up.
[edit] Location
The City is unusual in that it has a very limited population, most of whom live in the Barbican. The hunt avoids the Barbican and the hospitals and thus should not disturb many residents. It can be a slightly surreal event as the City has, typically been all-but deserted throughout the night. 2008 saw the event take place in a City with much more activity than had been usual - as the square mile's burgeoning night life scene became apparent and coincided with another all-night event in neighbouring boroughs - namely the annual MoonWalk (charity event).
The event's finishing point is normally Finsbury Circus, where occasionally, the veterans of the event get out portable stoves and start frying bacon once they've handed in their clue sheet for provisional marking.
A typical turnout would be sixty teams (there's a maximum of 120 teams).
There is a sister event called the Londinium Pedo, which is a three hour event taking place on foot in September or October. Both events are run by the United Hospitals and University of London Motoring Club (UHULMC).
[edit] Previous Events
45th Miglia Quadrato - 2004 15th May
46th Miglia Quadrato - 2005 14th May
47th Miglia Quadrato - 2006 13th May
48th Miglia Quadrato - 2007 12th May
49th Miglia Quadrato - 2008 17th May
[edit] Cancelled Events
2001 The event was cancelled in recognition of the need to reduce population movement due to an outbreak of foot and mouth disease.
