Les Schtroumpfs

Today we visited Le Labyrinthe near Durby in The Ardennes. It is essentially a giant maze with a different theme every year and this year it was The Smurfs! When we arrived we were given a map of the maze and told that the evil wizard, Gargamel, had put a spell on six of the smurfs and they couldn't remember who they were. Our mission was to locate the six 'mushrooms' within the maze and watch the performance of each smurf and then identify them before moving onto find the next one. Once we had located all of them we attended a performance at a stage within the maze (the above blip) to see all the smurfs come together to try and foil the wicked wizard! They spoke in a mixture of french and dutch but I think I got the gist of it. Basically there seemed to be a magic mirror and if they looked in it then they remembered who they were. The only problem was that the smurfette thought that she was a rock star and kept breaking out in to song and dance and didn't want to change back. Then the evil Gargamel appeared in the audience and after a bit of comedy chasing he ended up in front of the mirror and I think he then thought he was a baby or perhaps a puppy; I'm not sure. Then they waved to everyone and went off for their one hour lunch break.
I'll admit that it was a bit weird and a bit Belgian but it did make us chuckle!

We loved the maze and each took it in turns (apart from Dex who wasn't that helpful) to use the map to locate the next smurf, tower or marshland. Once we had finished the huge maze we came out for ice creams and a play in the playgrounds and then we explored the abundance of smaller mazes each made out of a different material such as wood, metal, stones, flowers (my favourite as it was lined with giant sunflowers and was so nearly my blip) and then we had a competition - boys versus girls - in what was described as the maze of doors. It was the most confusing maze I've ever been in as you had to answer questions in order to get the correct four digit number to pin into doors to open to the next part of the maze, made even harder as I had to translate the questions first! We're not really sure who won in the end as there didn't appear to be a centre as once you were in you had to try and figure a way to get out.
There was a lot of cheating.
On my team!