07/06/2026
The eagle-eyed among you may have spotted strategically placed custard creamsand, more recently, bourbon biscuits as you have been walking around the citycentre over the last few months. Not real biscuits, but bronze or golden versions,securely placed at various key locations around the city. So what’s it all about?
This may be old news to some, but as I have only recently made this discovery I
thought it might be worth mentioning here. The “Custard Cream Trail” is a publicart and scavenger hunt created by Cumberland Objects and is a project celebrating Carlisle’s rich biscuit heritage.
Carlisle is home to the world’s oldest biscuit factory,JD Carr, now Carrs/McVitie’s, which produces, among other things, millions of custard creams every single day. We are all familiar with the “biscuit” smell on aday when the wind is blowing in the right direction!
There are 50 custard creams hidden across Carlisle’s historic streets and at
landmarks such at Tullie Museum, the Cathedral and yes, St Cuthbert’s! Have a lookon the wall on Blackfriar’s Street, next to the banner advertising our concerts andyou’ll spot it. There is another on West Walls just beside the mirror opposite thecar park, and several more to find in the Cathedral grounds, to name but a few.
For the technically-minded among you, the idea is that when you find a biscuit, youscan the QR code next to it and get access to fun biscuit-related facts as well as the opportunity to post a photo of the location on the Cumbria Objectors page.
However, for those of you who tremble at the words “QR Code”, here are a couple of those fun facts…
6.5 million custard creams are produced in Carlisle every 24 hours.
If you lined up all the bourbon biscuits made in Carlisle in one year, they would
stretch 81,000km – that’s enough to circle the Earth twice!
Happy hunting – we would love to know how many you find.
