To celebrate the last Summer Solstice, we created Bora Maze on St Martin’s with a volunteers team of island residents and visitors, continuing the tradition long of maze-making at White Island Bar. A few months later, via someone’s social media post, we saw that the maze had been damaged, and that it was now possible to walk straight to the centre from the entrance. As the mazes are just made by laying pebbles on top of turf, this kind of thing is to be expected and nothing to worry about, but we thought we should go and investigate.

*Bora Maze on St Martin’sm two months after it was created.*

So, on the next sunny Saturday (which happened to be exactly two months after Bora Maze was built) we took a tripper boat over to St Martin’s to take a look at how the maze was settling in, and to re-lay the stones that had moved (movement of stones is constantly happening with these pebble labyrinths), so that the maze still worked as a usable labyrinth. These mazes do change shape over time - see out blog post about the changing form of Troy Town Maze, Scilly’s oldest labyrinth - which we welcome, but we didn’t want Bora Maze, which had been created with so much love and care by our team of volunteers (both St Martin’s islanders and visitors) to become an unusable a labyrinth quite this quickly!

However, when we arrived at White Island Bar - site of pebble-maze-making on St Martin’s since circa WW2 - we found that someone else had already mended the maze, turning it into a single path (unicursal) labyrinth again. This made us so incredibly happy! We knew that the maze would only survive if people on the islands wanted it there, otherwise it would slowly fade and vanish back into the landscape (which is also fine). But to see that someone else had liked it enough and cared enough to mend it, reassured us that people do want it here, and the mazes are special and meaningful for a lot of people.

We were also delighted to see that this repair had made Bora Maze into its own unique shape. When we first created it, we used the traditional seven circuit classical labyrinth shape, because this is the shape that Troy Town Maze originally had, as shown in old photos from the 1800s. But now Bora Maze maze has changed to have a spiral at the centre instead, as the photos above show, making this a uniquely shaped maze with a character all it’s own.

We have said before that Scilly’s labyrinths are truly collaborative: a collaboration between the original creators, the landscape of the islands, and all those who visit an walk the paths - changing the shape and nature of these sites by using them engaging with them for years after they are initially laid down. We are so happy to see that the maze we helped to create has also entered into this process of organic growth and evolution, existing as its own autonomous entity to be shaped and changed by the world around it.

Heartfelt thanks to everyone who worked with us to create Bora Maze at summer solstice, and to the anonymous person or people who are taking care of it now.

Revisiting Bora Maze on St Martin’s

Caerdroia Article : The Journal of Mazes and Labyrinths