Quiz night at the Trout

And so, I had a trip out of the village last night to visit The Trout Inn at Bickleigh for the monthly quiz night. In travelling from Silverton to Bickleigh we move from one small village to an even smaller one and one that is unusual in that its two pubs, The Fishermans Cot and The Trout Inn are seperated from the village of Bickleigh proper by the river Exe and that they are only accessible to the villagers by the old river bridge that also carries the main Exeter-Tiverton road.

The Trout Inn is a large and roomy country pub that has built up a good reputation for good food but is now also becoming well known for its monthly quiz that can carry a potential jackpot of £200 plus. Currently it stands at £230 which is probably why last nights quiz attracted 90 participants. The Silverton team consisted of 3 members of the Lamb Inn quiz team, myself who acts as a team reserve on occasions, the partner of one of the team members and last night a woman called Bernice from Tiverton who just happened to turn up and got included out of politeness.

We had 6 rounds of general knowledge and a picture round and the scores between the various teams were very closely matched throughout. Eventually, we lost out on getting a share of the regular prize money, which depends on the number of people entering, by one point and had we played our joker on one of the rpounds that we had originally considered rather than falling back on the easy option of pot luck, we would have probably one the £40 first prize. On the Jacpot round where it is necessary to get all the questions right (the number of questions decline as the Jackpot increases, last night there were eight) I think we got four. No one won the Jackpot so for the next quiz on July 27th the Jackpot goes up another £10.

So if you want to play a general knowledge quiz in the company of teams with names like the 'Nonorts' and the 'Tamworth Two' in a relaxed atmosphere and where you could win £230, not to mention where you can sink a few locally produced pints in a friendly atmosphere, you could do worse than heading on down to the Trout Inn at Bickleigh on the last sunday in july for an eight o clock start. We shall all be there, with some more knowledgeable additions hopefully. The trick to winning Quizzes is having people with a breadth of knowledge rather than necessarily any great expertise in one particular field.