Hunted fans saw Meurig Boggust and Elinor Pope caught after just five days on the run, and the pair have shared what they’d planned to do if they’d stayed on the show a bit longer.
Meurig and Elinor are featured, among the 11 contestants hoping to secure a share of £100,000.
The hit show sees them go temporarily on the run – labelled as fugitives – while they’re pursued by a group of current and former police and intelligence officials.
However, the Swansea couple were caught just a few days into the competition in the Brecon Beacons, after they decided to visit Meurig’s sister and brother-in-law’s house in the remote Welsh countryside.
Elinor was captured on foot after she was pursued in a dramatic chase, with her partner then followed by a drone in order to help track him down.
Meurig’s time came to an end shortly after, while he was running through a field away from the Hunters – meaning the pair became the first to exit.
Since the dramatic scenes played out on-screen earlier this week, the pair chatted with Metro.co.uk about the exhilarating experience, and their plans to leave secret coded messages which would direct Elinor’s former past and present colleagues directly to them.
She told us how the powers of TripAdvisor were key to the potential strategy: ‘Because I’ve worked in hospitality for so long now, I know how important TripAdvisor is.
‘I wanted to write to a couple of the places that I’ve worked at previously – because I know that checked – sort of coded messages within a public TripAdvisor review.
‘If we needed pickup times and locations and stuff like that, that was going to be our contact plan!’
In terms of how else they contacted friends and family, Meurig weighed in: ’We did use PlayStation to talk to people online, it wasn’t in the show, but we did use it in order to contact our friends.’
The couple brought a Polaroid camera along with them, which they planned to use to plant sneaky clues around the UK for the Hunters to find in their pursuit.
‘We were going to take pictures of ourselves in different places and leave the photos there for the Hunters just to see.
‘We only managed to do it once, but I don’t think the Hunters found it actually. I think otherwise it would have been in the show,’ Meurig added.
While some viewers were left baffled by their risky plan to visit family, Elinor explained why the pair felt it gave them a good shot at staying hidden.
She said: ‘It is so remote where [Meurig’s] family live. We’d passed the Hunters in the car and we knew obviously then we really had to disappear. We thought this was quicker. Sometimes it takes quite a while to find someone who can really help you. Sometimes it’s the fifth person you ask but sometimes it takes a couple of people and we just didn’t have that time.
They believed the instant help they’d get would be easier than having to convince someone, as they could quickly set off for another location.
‘Our plan was to not stay, and to just get instant help, supply and then go probably into England then from then on with our contacts in England, but it just didn’t work out. We never got the chance to do that,’ Elinor added.
This week’s instalment will see the remaining nine fugitives, comprising of four pairs and one solo contestant, continue their attempts to keep hidden from the Hunters.
But will any of them actually manage to avoid getting caught?
Hunted continues tonight at 9pm on Channel 4.
