Corn Maze Tribute to Olympics

Wow!  Check out this corn maze created by a farmer for the equestrian team in Great Britain for the summer olympics!  It's really cool how they make corn mazes into pictures.  I've always wondered how they do that.  ~Declan

The Westmorland Gazette  12:21pm Monday 16th July 2012 

Lake District farmer creates a special tribute to the 2012 Olympics

By Rachel Ryan  

A Lake District farmer has fashioned his own special giant tribute to the upcoming London 2012 Olympics across 10 and half acres of cornfields in Cumbria.

Graham Wadsworth, 41, has created the image of a giant horse rider leaping over a jump in honour of Great Britain’s equestrian team which are highly fancied to win Gold.

The special design at Raines Hall Farm, Sedgwick, near Kendal, was plotted using GPS. It took a day-and-a-half to do with the Dad-of-one walking the 3.5 miles of its design and carving it with a lawnmower and then perfecting it with a hand-strimmer.

The horse and rider are leaping a real dry stone wall. The horse measures a massive 200 metres x 100 metres, and the rider 80 metres by 60 metres.

Every summer the farm becomes 'the Lakeland Maize Maze', welcoming more than 20,000 visitors and from Saturday, families will be able to walk around the giant horse design as a 'Maize Maze', using quiz boards, clues and bridges to find their way to its centre.

Graham, 41, runs with wife Jane and horse-mad daughter Hannah. Mr Wadsworth said: “With it being Olympic year and Great Britain standing a good chance for gold in Equestrian events, we thought we’d pay our own special tribute. We’re a long way from the Olympics here but we’ll be rooting for team GB like the rest of the country.” Last year, the farm won Best Maize Maze tourist attraction in the UK title awarded by the official Maize Maze Association.

The maize will stay until October when it has reached such a height that it has to be harvested and made into silage for a local dairy farmer.