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Gone direction

The largest hedge maze in the whole of Spain. Speaking as someone with the sense of direction of plankton, that is something I will need to avoid assiduously, columnist Peter Edgerton writes

Peter Edgerton

Malaga

Friday, 31 January 2025, 19:03

If I'm ever going to visit the small town of Humilladero near Antequera in Malaga province, it'll have to be pretty sharpish. This is because in the next few weeks it will become the proud site of the spanking new Laberintus Park, which is to go down in the record books as the largest hedge maze in the whole of Spain. Speaking as someone with the sense of direction of plankton, that is something I will need to avoid assiduously. In fact were I ever to set foot in it, it would almost certainly also go down in the record books as having hosted the longest-lingering death by confusion in the history of humanity.

Among my finest achievements within the field of wrong turns are (in no particular order): turning left instead of right coming out of a shop I'd only entered two minutes earlier and walking 'back to my hotel' - which was on the same main road and only five minutes away - for a full twenty minutes before realising the mistake; walking for two hours in totally the wrong direction on the Camino de Santiago in spite of being greeted heartily by swathes of somewhat puzzled-looking pilgrims all coming the other way; being rescued by an ice cream man as a teenager having ventured so far in the wrong direction, I was in danger of falling over a cliff edge barely visible as night began to fall (I still don't know what the ice cream man was doing there although I strongly suspect he was a modern day angel in a wholly convincing Mr. Whippy disguise).

These are just the highlights. The more mundane, everyday occurrences almost always involve walking into storerooms instead of pub lounges or private meetings rather than corridors leading to exits. It's a burden.

Laberintus Park will have various levels of difficulty ranging from a half-an-hour escape time to a two-hour marathon which brings me out in hives just thinking about it. Two hours trapped in some hedges! Are you out if your minds? There'll also be a children's level. Maybe I could try that one, although, come to think of it, the sight of a grown man covered in twig scratches, down on his knees weeping uncontrollably may not be entirely beneficial to the emotional development of the little ones.

No, in much the same way as someone with vertigo would steer well clear of the highest bungee jump in Spain, I will simply have to give Humilladero a wide berth and hope it's 3,360 inhabitants will understand. It's a pity because I've just looked at some photos on the interweb and it looks quite lovely.

www.peteredgerton.com

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