Vienna- The Schonbrunn Gardens mazes

CBC and I travelled to Vienna in  Austria during our half term holiday.   We flew from our local airport which was incredibly easy and stayed in an Air BnB apartment.

On our penultimate day, we travelled to the Schonbrunn Palace.   Having spent several days in museums and art galleries, we were keen to explore the gardens.  Happily, there was no cost for these.

Schonbrun was very impressive looking and there was plenty of space for all the visitors to walk in the gardens without it feeling at all cramped.

 A myriad statues flanked the gardens.

 I adore mazes and was very happy to discover you could pay to go into the Schonbrunn mazes.  The mazes were designed by my favourite maze maker, Adrian Fisher and were highly entertaining.

The first thing we did was to enter the main maze. You had to reach a raised platform with stairs in the centre.  CBC and I went together.

 We took a few wrong turns but eventually reached the centre were we got some nice views of all around.

 CBC almost always beats me in any sort of physical challenge or race (I win on the board game front) so we decided to have a competition to see who could find their way out the maze quicker.
He went first and I timed him until he was out the main entrance.  Then it was my turn.  I confess to watching him very carefully, as much as I could, however, when I am actually trying to find my way, I do get very disorientated.  I was giggling really nervously.  I heard him give me a 10 second countdown to when I was going to go over his time- I ran frantically and...

 BEAT HIM BY just over 1 second! I NEVER win these things!!!

 Next, we headed into a lower maze where there were different things to find...

 In one place, we found these fun wobble board, like in that game, Screwball Scramble.

 Then there was a sea-saw water pump....

 My personal favourite was this musical item- it was like a glockenspiel that you played with your feet!

Here you can see CBC playing it.

Then there were some big speakers in the middle of the maze and the outside you could speak through.  CBC pretended it was the Crystal maze through the loudspeaker and I had 10 seconds to reach him outside the maze- the last challenge was these stepping stones.

In another place, there was a kaleidoscope of mirrors- we spent ages there being silly.  

 Next, there was a more rustic looking maze, made of more conventional trees rather than Box and again there were things and challenges to find.

 Adrian Fisher makes these fun maths challenges.

 On this one, you had to start on the +1 and try to find your way to the centre of it.  There were two ways to play it.  In the first, you ignore the plus and minus signs and just move left, right, forwards or backwards by that exact number of spaces.
The second version, you do exactly the same, but you have to keep track of a sum in your head and try and end up with a final answer of zero when you reach the centre. 

 CBC spent AGES trying to work this out!

There were some impossible poles to climb!

 Then there was the kids playground with musical challenges. I liked this pentatonic instrument which was a cross between tubular bells and an mbira!

There was an Archimedes screw...

 and there were other challenges.

After that, we headed out further into the gardens for a walk. We stopped for an outrageously expensive cup of tea.  A cup of tea was so expensive in Vienna 4.50 Euros +.  If you got a big pot of tea, it wouldn't be so bad but you get a tiny glass and a tiny teapot which barely makes even 1.5 cups!

It was definitely good to get outside and the mazes made it really fun!

I hope to make a few more posts about Vienna but I do find holiday posts like this quite daunting so I won't promise anything!

x

Beautiful Blenheim- The Marlborough Maze

As you may have realised in my Maize maze post, I adore mazes.  I was delighted to experience a double maze experience in my week in Oxfordshire as I realised that we were near to Blenheim palace which had a famous five which I learnt about in my 'Amazing mazes' book. Blenhem is owned by the Duke of Marlborough and is famously the home of Winston Churchill. I put the maze as a day trip proposal to CBC and J and they both seemed keen.  It was, unfortunately a day of egregious British weather so we had to battle on in the rain.

 I'll tell you about the other parts of Blenheim we visited, but you can read about the maze above. I laughed at the 25 minutes to solve- it took CBC and I 10 minutes the first time and then after we went back and did it timing each other, I managed a respectable 5 minutes and CBC, 3 minutes!

 We set off together through the hedge maze.

 The route you take makes use of two bridges which helps to orientate you.

 CBC, the swine, beat me to the first.

 We could see our target from the bridge.

 There's something so exciting about an ancient hedge-maze. Authors are fascinated by them- Kate Morton, J.K Rowling, many authors use them. And forget not the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur!

 We enjoyed the different zones of the maze- there were winding paths and many dead ends!

 CBC ran ahead at some point and I lost him!

 Luckily, that black umbrella was easy to spot!

 Some people behind us muttered,"He knows where he's going!"and trotted after him. He does have an extraordinary sense of direction!

 And here was the view from the second bridge, even in the rain, we were super excited!

 And at last, we reached the centre!  Hurrah!

 From the middle, you suddenly realised that those were letters spelling Blenheim!

 How does one train as a topiary hairdresser? How often must one shear the bushes?

This was my favourite part of Blenheim but there is so much more than the maze!  Come back soon to find out what...

xx

The maize-maze at Millet's farm- It's a little corny!

Last week, CBC and I travelled to Oxfordshire to stay with CBC's Mum in CBC's sister's house. It's a little -complicated!   We'd been there for 4 days and on the 4th day, driving to Wallingford to see my uni friend, I noticed we were driving past Miller's farm which had a Maize-maze which I have in my 'Amazing Maze' book (yes, I have one of those-I'm planning future holidays based on it! Anyone live near Dobbie's maze world?)  Ridiculously excited, I decreed that we MUST go there in the morning and SMSd KKWTTG (Bruv in law) who immediately texted back lots of corny maze jokes!)

The next morning, we set off there and swiftly the three of us near ran to the Maze section. If you have kids and are going on holiday in Oxfordshire in the summer months, I cannot say how much I recommend you take them there (or if you just like mazes like us).  We paid £6.50 each and were given a 'Ration book' and pencil which were places to record your maze findings.  You can see some past Maize-mazes in the photo below.  They have had one every year for 17 years. This year's theme was 70 years since the end of WW2.

There's a range of activities. We were, er- expecting to be done in about an hour, but 3.5 hours later and we were still in the maze section, never mind the rest of the garden centre, picky your own, koi carp or craft section of Millet's farm.

We headed in. There are 3 main maze:

The mini, the midi and the main mazes.

You head through some maize to reach the entrances to the maze.

We started with the Midi- Maize.

I thought I'd share the moment we entered this maze with you. You can hear what an idiot I am with the daft commentary!

The thing that takes the time is, you have things to hunt for in the maze.
In the Midi, you were searching for the 8 ration stations which had multiple choice questions about food during WW2.

 Aha! CBC has found one!

 We swiftly found the first 5 without any trouble.  There was some contention over answers, so we all answered differently.

I should mention,for those of you that panicked when I wrote about the maze in my Scavenger Hunt, that you are supplied with a tall flag, should you need help!

 There was a platform to go over with the Millet's farm signs.

 The corn was quite tall and stretched for long way.

 ....

.....

 You aren't supposed to touch the maize or go off the paths but I suppose if you were really desperate to leave, you could squeeze through some gaps!

We loved the differing hair colours of the cobs!

 When we'd answered question 5, we found question 8 and ourselves at the end of the maze! Ahrgh, where were questions 7 and 6?

 Back into the maze, we became separated!!!  It took ages to find the last one!

When we checked our answers at the end, I was a Field Marshal (highest rank) and CBC and bruv were Brigadiers!

That was only the midi-Maze.

The main maze was even more fiendish with red herrings galore!! 

I should say that the ration books provide you with a picture of the mazes but for directionally-challenged moi, this was no help!

In here,we  were searching for the letters and numbers on poppies but there were extra ones! There were four colour zones of the maze to search in!

 Right-o chaps!

NOOOOOOO, a red herring!

 CBC separated and left me and WKWTTG together as he didn't have the ration book! We noticed the corn was taller in here!

The bridges were good for helping orientate yourselves but we wandered for ages without finding any correct poppies!!

Meeting up with CBC again, he found a few in the red zone but the yellow zone was proving impossible!

 We separated off again and WKWTTG and I had some luck once we found the bridge- we found several green zone clues!!!

Eventually, we found ALL the poppies and the codebreaker and I worked out the answer!

Next, we entered the woods which functioned like a simple maze for the Aces High challenge. Outside the maze, was a picture of sillhouettes of enemy, servillian and Allied planes.

Upon finding them in the woods, you had to sketch them and then name the models!

 Great fun for little-uns!

Next, we entered the Mini-maze, for little ones and the corn was suitably shorter! Plus, a slide!!

Ridiculously, as a teacher, I always tell kids to read the question carefully.

We walked around and around the maze trying to find all the pictures and wondered why the mini-maze was so hard. Doh! The book said find FOUR of these pictures,not all!

At this point, our phones rang, J, CBC's Mum wondered where we were. We sheepishly explained we were still in the maze. 

It was time to go, there was plenty more to do, but we had to drive back to Essex.

Before we went, we went to have a look at this friendly tank!

If you are ever south of Oxford, I heartily recommend Millet's farm! It is enormously fun, there's something for all ages and there was plenty more to do.

Here's the website to find out more.

If you aren't near Oxford but fancy finding a maize-maze, may I suggest this Maize-maze website, so you can search for one near you: http://www.maize-maze.com/contact.php.

Hazel, fancy going to the Southwold one?!

xx

Over to you, have you been to one!?