Chateau de Montségur

Where on earth is Christian? That was the puzzle that needed to be solved in this years Apex Competition of Spitfire Audio. Monday 25 March 2019 5PM GMT Christian revealed his hide out place: Chateau de Montségur.

I love puzzles and challenges

Of course I entered the competition. First, I love puzzles and challenges. Second, Spitfire Audio offered some great prizes for the winners.

As I told you before, I have Chamber Strings for quite a while now on my wishlist of string libraries. And that particular library was one of the prizes.

Nevertheless, I bought the library with the 50% discount in advance. Hoping that I would win the competition. And that I would get the full refund.

The competition started at Thursday 21st March at the end of the day. I had time until Sunday to find the exact location. Three days to find the needle in the haystack.

Thursday: kickstart search

Thursday evening I watched the video over and over again. Zooming in to find some sort of recognition point. A sign, a word or whatever. I couldn’t find anything.

Then I downloaded the video from YouTube. Maybe some location data was stored in the file? Of course not! They strip that out dummy!

I made several screenshots from the video and went to Google images. Maybe Google knew where Christian was? I ended up with worthless guessing places and realized this would not bring me closer to Christian.

Arghh!

I stopped my search after an hour or so. Went to the hockey. Got home very late and went straight to bed.

Chateau de Montségur: gotcha on Friday!

Friday I started my search again with renewed energy. I had seen a picture on Instagram which I thought it was LAX (airport Los Angeles). Maybe Christian was playing hide and seek in the mountains surrounding the city of angels? Rather quickly I concluded that was not the case.

A friend of mine, who I showed the video to, thought about Scotland. Ben Nevis or Fort Williams. That area. My friend did not knew anything about Christian background (living in Edinburgh). That made me wonder. Maybe Christian played a home game? Rather quickly I concluded that was not the case.

Than I realized Christian was talking French. ‘Frisson’. ‘Je ne sais quo’. Maybe that was a hint? So I Googled old fortresses in France. Which gave me quite a long list. But a lot of them fell out of scope. They needed to be in a mountain-ish landscape.

Now I know France quite well. So I narrowed down my search. Google Earth, my friend in this search, gave me great pleasure. And rather quickly I entered the Chateau de Montségur. And I knew immediately that I found Christian.

The holes in the wall. The bricks. The small breech in the wall which I guess is for aiming at enemies when under attack. The big rock which the chateau sits on. The mountain with snow and the landscape. It all matched exactly with the video.

I was thrilled!

The verdict: inches

Christian revealed his location last Monday on YouTube. And told us competitors it would be a close call. Someone pointed the location by a distance less than a ruler!

Oh my …

24 hours passed. That was the time window to receive an email from Spitfire Audio. Telling you that you’re one of the winners.

I didn’t receive any.

Nevertheless, I had joined a great competition. Had great fun doing the search and most of all: I have a top-notch string library with a 50% discount.

I feel like a winner!