Monmouthshire pub and events company team up with Escape Rooms

Kate Isaac, the landlady at the Coach and Horses in Caerwent has joined forces with Ellis Lee and Kennedy Hallett of Events ML with an outdoor Escape Rooms to give the community something to smile about and to raise funds.

The Escape Rooms in the pub’s garden is made up of multiple Escape Rooms tents all with a different theme.

Each Escape Room is filled with puzzles, and the aim is to complete the puzzle to free yourself from the locked rooms.

Shortly the garden at the pub will be completed with a Christmas Escape Room and an ice rink, and Mrs Isaac and Mr Lee are hoping to see a boost in visitors.

“I was chatting to Kate a couple of months ago about there not being much on offer here for children and families at the moment, and we thought it was a great opportunity to put something like this together,” said Mr Lee, who has never done Escape Rooms before.

“We usually do something with the pub for Halloween but that wasn’t possible this year with the firebreak – so we wanted to give people something to smile about and help our own businesses get by too.

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“The reaction has been really positive. We’ve had a lot of people say they wouldn’t visit a normal Escape Rooms (indoors), but they’ve enjoyed it.

“I think it works because people feel safe. We only see players at the beginning and the end, and there is no mixing of households.”

Mrs Isaac and pub staff funded much of the materials while Mr Lee and Ms Hallett made the puzzles.

“It’s been so important for us to get going again with some sort of event, because everything we had scheduled has been cancelled,” Mr Lee added. “We’ve not had a single event since March before this.

“It’s been a hugely difficult time. We only started as a business a year ago, and it was going well until March. We haven’t received any funding. We’re lucky not to have many overheads, but there has been nothing coming in either.”

One of the many Escape Rooms

On the impact of the pandemic on the pub trade, Mrs Isaac added: “It’s been a nightmare – it seems to change most weeks and we’re constantly having to adapt. Today we only have three of us on, but when they brought in table service only we suddenly had to get more staff in, and now we can’t afford to have that amount of staff.

“We get a lot of visitors from England too, so when they went into lockdown we knew it would be a tough month.

Area which will soon be home to a Christmas themed Escape Room

“It’s so important people come here, even for a coffee – and I think this (Escape Rooms) can help that to happen.

“We are already getting people doing the Escape Rooms and then coming in for a meal, and when the ice rink is there I think people will be even more inclined to do that.”