Syon Park - London Butterfly House

So we went to Syon Park in Brentford -

- still run by the His Grace the Duke of Northumberland (very nice, but will have to go and pay a visit another day) on bank holiday Monday. I can understand why the Duke's family aren't currently in residence though, as it's unfortunately right on the flight path into London Heathrow (and thus extremely noisy) -

- but landing planes weren't the flying things we were after, we had come *mainly* to check out the London Butterfly House -

Now, the weather on Monday was threatening to be nice (occasionally) but was still mostly cloudy and cold, so I was dressed accordingly (long trousers, long sleeved t-shirt and a thick fleece/coat) and having not been warned in advance (although I really should have thought about it) this proved totally innapropriate attire for the activity...it was *boiling* in there, and extremely humid too...(so if you go along, leave your coat in the car)...as soon as we walked through the door we were surrounded by butterflies of all shapes and sizes, so I immediately reached for the camera, only to notice with some puzzlement that I couldn't focus on *anything*...spinning it round it became apparent that the temperature difference between outside and in had covered the lense completely in mist! I resisted the urge to wipe it, and thankfully, within about 5 or 6 minutes it had gone all by itself...(phew!)...so, a few of the pics, I even know what some of them are called now -

This one is a "Burmese Peacock"...

A "Glass Wing"...

"The Owl"...(who made up these names?)...

An "Indian Leaf"...

A "Tree Nymph"...well, I could go on (the full flickr stream is here if you like butterfly pictures)...Oh, one really cute(?) thing they did have is a colony of leaf cutter ants that live in a huge (and very dirty) perspex box near the entrance, they are isolated from the regular foliage and connected to a special platform suspended over one of the ponds by a couple of large ropes, along which they travel to cut leaves (best to click this one to see it a bit bigger) I thought this was excellent, as normally they are isolated completely inside an ant farm -

...now, it's not a huge place, I think all in all we were in there for about an hour, and that was really pushing it, so don't plan to spend the day on that occupation alone, thankfully there are a load of other things to do around there, we got it just about wrong though, arriving too late for it to be worth it to do anything else apart from eat our picnic and wander round the huge garden centre/aquarium opposite but get there early and there would be plenty to fill more than one day...just wear comfortable shoes... ;) Oh, on that note my foot is much better, thanks (been resting it the last few days, wearing a compression bandage and taking anti-inflamitory medicine), so I'm back in London today, but taking it easy... ;)