Hazlehead Park

Hi Everybody :)

Sorry for the long silence. I will catch up with the things that happened with us during these couple of months, but before that, I would like to share with you Today's adventure. The Hazlehead Park..

This is a large public park in Hazlehead area of Aberdeen. Roughly an hour and half walking distance from our home. I have spotted it on the map for a fine time now, but I always thought that area of Aberdeen has nothing special to offer (just like the rest of it). But I have never been more grateful to be mistaken than this time.

Today was started as an average cloudy warmish day in Aberdeen. It happened to be our mutual day off, and as someone who has a very high demand for walks, I insisted on taking a nice walk to somewhere new. (Maxim proposed to take a walk to Aldi just to combine the useful with the pleasurable..)  So, trying to reach an agreement, we decided to go to Lidl to have some ice-cream/cake/snack in order to survive the serious ordeal of taking me out for a walk, then continue our way to Hazlehead park, which is pretty close to the Lidl. So, Maxim prepared the essentials (spoons for the ice cream) and we were off. :)

Just a visual representation of our travel..

This is our treat from Lidl. This and a couple of cheese twists. We always thought that this is a 1-person-cake only and we are doing so great when we split it between us, but today I noticed, it serves 6.. ( It must be the calories that are meant for 6, and not the portions apparently.. )
Unfortunately, there were no suitable ice creams for our taste, but fear not, we went to a different lidl just 4 ours ago to get them. :P

The cheesy twists didn't last long, but we managed to save the cake for the park.

On the way to the park.. We saw a couple of nice houses, and a lot of green spots everywhere..

And that's it, we arrived. First thing we noticed was the flowers. Loads of flowers, with nice flower scent everywhere..
The park is not that big as it is shown on the map, because the majority of the park is a golf club (Of course, what else could it be? ) and divided into smaller sections. Unfortunately the memorial garden and the rose garden were under construction, but the rest was a wonderful experience.



There was a pet corner, which we have not visited, but we heard that they definitely have a donkey.


There was another garden with full of colourful flowers (see pictures) and there was a Maze.. I read somewhere that this is Scotland's first maze, and was opened in 1935.
For those who are not familiar with Maxim's ideas, He is very fond of mazes, He actually would like to build one in his (our) garden for the kids, He has a complete idea how the maze will look like, and honestly, his idea of having an Easter egg hunt in the maze for (with) the kids sounds very entertaining.



Near the park entrance there was a cafe, which was (being Monday morning) full with wives with small children. It was a bit noisy, but otherwise charming place, but we decided to have our cake at a more quiet area where we can have some discussion as well.

I regret not taking a picture about the layout of the park, but maybe next time I won't forget it..

 Here the park in pictures.

This is the rose garden. still a bit grey. :(

I don't really know what this is, just thought it looks nice.

 These were the flowers I was talking about. They were beautiful, and had very rich colors. Probably the yellow ones were my favorites. (Maxim actually did not order them according to his taste, but he says 'there were plenty of lovely flowers'.)

 And a fountain. Interesting thing, the fountains are not working here. We don't really know why it is, we think that maybe they try to save water, but seeing a fountain like this makes me feel sad, like all the joy and life are just passing away from it.

This is already the MAZE. Here Maxim explains to me his plans of how our maze will look like.

 Taking an .. khm.. illegal shortcut..

But no worries, I caught him red handed. :D

Maxim really enjoyed the Maze, though we managed to got lost a couple of times before we found the right way out :D

We loved the colorful benches, the bright  flowers, the nice scent, and pretty much everything in the park, which, by the way, has a Margit Sziget atmosphere, just more compact. 

We will definitely come back another time for a picnic. :D

During our way home, we took another detour to check out a small lake (you can see it on the map). Well, it turned out that the lake is a quarry, and closed down from the public. All we could manage was a picture of the lake.