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  • Writer's pictureRobert Blake

Week Ten

Week Ten


My travels are over! Thank you all for joining me on my journey. I hope that you enjoyed it, that you had some fun while researching a whole load of not very useful information and that you may be able to visit some of the places I have been to when the whole virus thing is over. I certainly had fun discovering the places, as well as poets, painters, birds and a lot of history.

This week, there are nine questions to keep you occupied into 2021, the last of which might be the make or break question that will give us a winner in terms of maximum points.

You need to send me your answers before close of play on January 6th. I will post the final scores, the final answers and the teams’ positions shortly thereafter and will let you know when this is done but it will most likely be on the 8th.

The team at Bread and Water will update me on the donations, but we are now well over the 5,000 USD mark which is great news for a lot of people in Kenya.


The answers to last week were: Rovaniemi; Arctic Circle; Philip Pullman; Alvar Aalto; Joulupukki; Vixen; Clement Clarke Moore.

There are still 6 teams who are on Maximum Points. They are: Indefinitely Grounded; Kenya Give Us a Clue; The Flying Breadboards; The Glens Folk; The Intrepid Aldronians; Wood Folk.


A few kind and generous donations have come in, so here are the Top Twenty Teams (points times donations) as at today: 1: Kenya Give Us a Clue; 2: Bertie's Sidekicks; 3: The Travelling Willesburys; 4: The Intrepid Aldronians; 5: Ras Kitoka; 6: The Flying Breadboards; 7: Shaw to Shore; 8=: Fox Moth and Jejosa Selita- Cool Beanies!!; 10: Marge's Marvels; 11: The Barbecues; 12: The Glens Folk; 13: Crying Rhys; 14: Wood Folk; 15: Rambling Stoics; 16: Indefinitely Grounded; 17: Woodton Wanderers; 18: Laughing Stock; 19: Mighty Mambas; 20: Wandering Warthogs



Well done and thank you for your support.


Here is Week Ten …


My Bubblecraft should have taken me home but it developed a “Houston we have a problem” sort of a problem and now it lies, in many pieces, on a beach that overlooks a channel, on the other side of which is the mainland. I pick myself up, dust off the sand and head away from the sea and into an old town that is made of – well, rock for want of a better word. Soon I find myself lost in a maze of narrow streets and tall buildings. History seeps from every nook, cranny, crevice and ornate doorway, as does the smell of spices. Spices gave the place its prosperity and for many years this was the world’s largest exporter of one particular spice, used in many forms of cooking, as well as in pomanders and as a traditional medicine to alleviate toothache. And while we’re on the subject of teeth, I notice that a house here claims to be the birthplace of a rock star, the mercurial Farrokh Bulsara. Escaping the heat, I enter the relative cool of a church, built on the site of a ghastly market. Twelve columns, one for each apostle, are close by the altar, said to be on the exact spot of a whipping post. Something seems odd about the columns and a little investigation tells me why. Close by, I have to crouch down to enter an eerie and ghost-filled room where people were packed in, the last place on earth for many, caught up in the most vile of trades. I head back out to fresh air, sunshine and freedom. As I walk, I mull over my travels and am struck by the heavy hand of colonialism that has shaped so much of what I have seen. I find myself outside a wonderful but dilapidated house, the first to have electricity and an elevator in all of East Africa, a crumbling reminder of the human cost of vanity and greed. I am reminded of a poem: “Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare the lone and level sands stretch far away”. Well, that’s all rather gloomy. Time for a cold Serengeti! Cheers!


  1. On which island am I?

  2. In which film did the problem that I refer to occur?

  3. What is the name of the town?

  4. ‘The world’s largest exporter’ - of which particular spice?

  5. Who was the rock star?

  6. What is odd about the columns in the church?

  7. What is the name of the electrified house?

  8. Which poet was I quoting?

  9. And finally: To the nearest 10 km, how far have I travelled in total since leaving Nairobi?



Answer the questions and send your answers by email to me before 17:00 GMT on Wednesday January 6th at:

rtw2020kamili@gmail.com

The subject of the email should be your name and the number of the week.

The text of the email should contain your name and the answers.

For example:

You are sending the answers to Week Ten and your team name is The Frequent Flyers.

Subject: Frequent Flyers Week 10

Text:

Frequent Flyers

1: Your answer

2: Your answer

et cetera ...

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