The Maize Maze - Spring Barn Farm Park

If you’re partial to the occasional tongue twister, try saying “Spring Barn Farm Park’s Robin Hood themed maize maze” a few times. On second thoughts, just head down to the farm with your kids to try it out. The centrepiece of this year’s four and half acre creation is the Sheriff of Nottingham’s Castle, which you are invited to storm - once you’ve found it that this. Other distractions along the way are Prince John’s Counting House, Little John’s Walkway and the Sherwood Forest camp - complete with three tunnels ready and waiting to be explored by children of all ages. If you go the wrong way however, you are as likely to end up in the dungeons hidden towards the back, or wandering into Maid Marian’s Tower. Basically, it’s a fun journey around a field of ten-foot high cow fodder - so if you’re feeling peckish, wait till you get back to the similarly themed café.

And if you’re wondering why you can’t remember going to a maize Maze when you were a kid, it’s probably because they didn’t have them. Back in the ‘old days’ - well at least prior to a decade or so of BSE, foot & mouth and EU farming subsidies - farms were into farming and little else. The first maze appeared in the United States in 1993, and they are now a worldwide craze with companies existing purely to build them. Amazing… NW