\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ http://www.orthogonal.com.au/hobby/maze/index.htm (website: Nancy Street: Mazes) Longeat2 (picture caption) Longleat Maze in 1989. This view from one of the bridges shows one of the three complicated spirals that made the maze so difficult to solve. Longleat Hedge Maze Longleat Entry Ticket About a week after the disappointing trip to Hampton Court we were driving up through Wiltshire after a visit to Stonehenge. On the way up the A36 I saw a road sign that said "Longleat House and Maze". A Maze! I'd never heard of Longleat, but we had plenty of time so I turned off. And the rest is history...I had accidentally stumbled across the largest hedge maze in the world. Hampton Court was a flea next to this monster maze which changed my perception of mazes forever and set the bar very high for all future mazes I would visit. As I walked towards Longleat maze I was unprepared for the vast size and winding complexity. I could see bridges and a central viewing tower in the distance, so this wasn't just a standard maze, it was 3-D and clearly very difficult. The lady in the entrance booth said it took about an hour on average to get through the maze. Phew! (pack provisions and make sure you've been to the toilet) Off we went. For 20 minutes we deliberately tried to reach all of the extents of the maze, including the bridges and the central tower. After about 30 minutes we were getting eager to find the exit and exploration became quite serious. Somehow, more by luck than brains we stumbled into an area we had never been to before and it thankfully led to the exit and we stumbled out. It took about 50 minutes to traverse the maze. As we were on the way out, an American lady called to us from one of the bridges "How did you get over there? We've been stuck for an hour and our kids are waiting for us outside". Sadly, we couldn't tell her how we got out. Longleat Maze - Click images to enlarge Upon exit from the maze I asked the lady at the ticket booth if there was a plan of the maze available. She said that the design of the maze was a proprietary secret due to tough international design competition and there was litle chance I would ever find a plan of the Longleat Maze. To be honest, she's probably right about the competitive aspect, but I hardly suspected the design of Longleat maze was close to a military secret. Read on... By accident, ten years after visiting Longleat I heard an interview on Radio National with Adrian Fisher who was promoting his book Secrets of the Maze (ISBN 0-500-01811-1, Quarto Publishing plc). Days later I rushed up to Cosmos Bookshop in the Melbourne suburb of St. Kilda and snatched a copy of the book for a considerable $45.00. The first thing I did was flip though the pages for technical information on Longleat maze, and there in all its clear beauty was a design plan of the maze (as it was in 1989 before the extension in the lower right). Following is a scan of the plan of Longleat maze from Adrian Fisher's book, sharpened, colour flattened and carefully flood-filled with colours that highlight that internal structure of the maze. You can see that the maze is designed to be a group of nearly closed "cells" that link to each other via small bridges. This design neatly mirrors the experience of being inside the maze, where one gets the feeling of being stuck in a certain area, then stumbling into a new area and getting stuck again. The way the "cells" overlap is quite confusing, and the 3 spirals compound the confusion in a serious way. Just stare at the design for a while and try to imagine the difficulty of walking through a real hedge maze that follows this design. Follow the In brown path which has only a single way out of the "cell" via the purple path, which then splits into 3 paths of which only one is the way out and the other two will lead you deep into the bowels of the maze. \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ http://www.eg.bucknell.edu/~hyde/England/day11c.html (Personal trip blog) 18LongeatMaze.jpg Caption: Scotty in the maze 19LongeatMaze.jpg caption: Jan and Mary Jane at a bridge //////////////////////////////////////// http://www.britishnews.co.uk/newsarchive/lordbath.htm (British News Archives) LORD BATH'S NEW LONGLEAT ATTRACTION IS REALLY A-MAZE-ING Lord Bath,the self-styled King of Wessex,has shattered his own world record for having the longest maze. The 65-year-old head of the Longleat estate in Wiltshire has boasted the record for the longest hedge maze since 1976. Now he's officially opened a new,larger,maze in the grounds,with paths stretching over one and threequarter miles,in an area covering more than one and a half acres. Extra signs have been posted to help tourists who face spending the night lost in the labrynth. ////////////////////////////////// http://www.longleat.co.uk/attractions/hedge-maze.html (Longeat.com) Unlike most other conventional mazes it’s actually three-dimensional, with six wooden bridges offering tantalising glimpses towards the elusive centre of the maze, which is marked by an observation tower for visitors who manage to find it! It’s an enormously popular attraction with Longleat’s visitors who take an average of 90 minutes to complete it! 7.jpg View from above 6.jpg People in the maze' ///////////////////////////////////// http://news.jasonhawkes.com/archives/2006/04/aerial_views_fr.html (Jason Hawkes' Favorite Aerial photographs) 4296.jpg Longleat House, the Stately Home of the Seventh Marquess of Bath To help finance the upkeep on Longleat House and the Estate, the Sixth Marquess of Bath was the first in England to provided attractions for visitor. Besides tours of the House , the Maze and others, the main attraction is the Longleat Safari Park, famous for its lions. We did not have time to do the House or the Safari Park. Set in 9,000 acres of rolling countryside and just a few miles from the Wiltshire market town of Warminster, lies the Longleat estate. http://www.bbc.co.uk/wiltshire/entertainment/days_out/longleat.shtml The estate consists of 4,000 acres of let farmland, 4,000 acres of woodland, which includes a Center Parcs holiday village and a further 1,000 acres of 'Capability' Brown landscaped parkland.