A TOP Lakeland attraction has reopened for the summer season with a new challenge to bamboozle visitors.

The Lakeland Maize Maze, at Raines Hall Farm, Sedgwick, offers a different labyrinth of paths for people to puzzle out every year, with this year's themed around giants.

Large numbers of visitors have already started arriving to see if they can navigate their way around the maze which this summer features the head of Roald Dahl's The BFG (Big, Friendly Giant), along with Sophie - the young girl who meets the giant in the famous children's story.

The tale has been given the blockbuster treatment this summer and stars Mark Rylance as the lead character.

Graham Wadsworth, who farms at Raines Hall, said: "It's going really well so far. We have seen a lot of Scottish and Northern Irish visitors: a higher number than we have seen for many years. We have also had a lot of school visits.

"The farm park opened at Easter but the maze is only really just getting going. But in terms of visitors on the whole it has been quite a lot better than we have seen before."

"The crop itself is higher at this time of year than ever before as well. It's seven foot at the moment and we can expect it to grow to nine or ten foot high."

To create the maze Graham and the team use a professional designer called Maizescape. They send a design over and it is implemented using GPS and lawnmowers when the crop is beginning to grow.

Raines Hill Farm has been running the Maize Maze alongside its farm park for 12 seasons now.

"We always grew maize for animal feed and I was speaking to somebody who said: 'Why don't you do a maize maze?'" said Graham.

"At first I wasn't sure but he showed me the number of visitors that other mazes were getting and I thought I'd give it a go.

"We now have indoor and outdoor areas so we can deal with all kinds of weather which is important in this area."