A Maze South of London

Hampton Court's maze

After five years living in London, I've finally managed to drag Kevin to Hampton Court. We arrived just before noon, caught a few rainshowers, visited the formal gardens and took a few audio tours of the palace -- the kitchen & the rooms used by Henry VIII -- before a tea break and a dash home.

The garden's maze was the highlight. Just as the sun came out, we entered the corridors made of hedges and searched for the maze's centre. Little speakers placed in strategic locations broadcast birds chirping, gongs, chimes and sultry voices saying random things like "please take my hand" or "you must get down". Lost families happily shouted at each other how they couldn't find their way out, or that they should split up into teams. In the maze's centre, a spanish-looking male couple kissed while I bored talked to Kevin of medieval europe's fascination with the labyrinth as a way to meditate (the only "useful" thing I learned from Kate Mosse's trashy novel Labyrinth.)

I have always loved labyrinths and this is one of the reasons I wanted to visit Hampton Court. To be honest, I'm not even sure what's the difference between a maze and a labyrinth -- is a maze man-made and a labyrinth a mythological creation? According to Wikipedia's page, mazes and labyrinths are quite different: mazes are riddles challenging you to reach its centre, while labyrinths are not necessarily hard to navigate. However, wasn't the Minotaur's labyrinth as difficult to navigate as a maze? Maybe mazes are meant to be aesthetic puzzles for the average person while labyrinths are truly terrifying creations nobody knows who created, or what's inside.

One of the main attractions of Brasilian amusement parks are their mazes made of glass. These are quite easy to navigate as an adult but are terrible traps for children. I can still remember my brother, 7 or 8 years old, stuck in one of them, crying his eyes out and bumping into glass walls as he desperately tried to find the exit. Oh, how we laughed outside. I've never seen them anywhere else apart from Brasil, and I suppose other countries like England don't need them if their castles house mazes in their gardens.

There was something very calming about walking through Hampton Court's maze. It looked deceptively simple and small from the outside. I could imagine zen monks walking through something similar, emptying their minds as they tried to follow the different paths and reach the centre.