Off on holiday...

...soon! Got three days left at work (well, two and a half now)...plans are for a nice comfortable static caravan on the cliffs overlooking Widemouth Bay in Cornwall (for 7 nights) and a couple of days in Somerset (to break up the journey) visiting Wookey Hole and Longleat neither of which Flyingpops or I have visited since we got married - 3 kids ago - (those links are to my pics from 2008)!

Really looking forward to it...just hope the weather holds up! ;)

Longleat Continued

So anyway, we had finished the (excellent) Safari park section of Longleat, and then drove past the extremely impressive house to the car park behind (which was actually pretty full, despite being there firmly out of season), we wandered around taking in a bit of the gardens -



- (very nice indeed) and then past the mini electric railway -

- and into the mini-butterfly house/gift shop (it's about a 60-40 split)
but actually that's a bit of a relief as huge butterfly houses can be a
bit draining (humidity-wise) especially dressed, as we were, for
indeterminate weather -




- and from there on to the Safari Boat -

- flanked by noisy Sealions -

- past invisible Hippos -

- and finally to the famous "Gorilla Island" where there now lives but one, extremely old Gorilla (who apparently is now of the equivalent age to a 90 year old man), and yet they still torture the poor old fellow by hiding his food all over the place -


- then into "Old Joes Mine" where fruit bats fly free (and right past you using their incredible powers of echo location) a quite extraordinary experience -

- however, flash photography was banned, so the only way we managed to get a decent shot was by me using my green focus assist lamp and Flyingpops to shoot low light, click the picture if you want to see them close up (however, they look like hamsters with wings) -

- next we went on the Gorilla Adventure simulator ride -

- which made Flyingpops feel distinctly unwell, and then on to the house itself, which has a zero photography policy (probably wise, considering the taste in art) -



- we stopped for a spot of lunch, and then headed back to the hotel, the plan to eat in Farley-Hungerford later on... ;)

Longleat Safari Park

So, day 3 we decided to go and check out Longleat, got there rather early (although again the Sat-nav insisted on taking us down some rather unnecessarily small roads) so we ditched it and just started following the brown signs, which *also* took us down some silly little roads, so perhaps Somerset is just mostly made up of them...

Anyway, got there in the end (after several diversions), and even though the day was young there was already a queue for tickets -

- we had cunningly bought our tickets online (saving 10% in the process) but there was no fast-track bonus benefit to having done so...when we got to the front, the lady took our number issued our tickets and "Jurassic Park" style audio guide (had to hop out of the car and put it into the multi-changer in the boot), and then we were ready to enter!

They made it completely clear, the animals are wild, they do whatever they like and any damage to the vehicle is just "one of those things"...ulp...especially as we had watched this video on Youtube the evening before...Anyway, the first area you enter is a reasonably safe one, not only allowing you to keep the car windows open (much better for photography) -


- but also allowing you to get out of the car (in certain sections) to visit the shop (full of African tat art) -


- scare some Guinea Fowl -

- and take the "Wallaby walk" (very cute) -

- then it's back in the car, past other large and small herbivores -



- past some of the "worlds largest" aviaries (which didn't look as big as the one at London Zoo to me) -


- and thence to (what was actually probably the highlight of the visit) the "Monkey Jungle", past not one huge warning sign -

- but two "Monkeys will climb on your vehicle and will cause damage - YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED" being the most fierce (no joke, we saw people turning their vehicles away when they saw that one) -

- and it was no exaggeration either, the little blighters were all over all the cars -

- including ours (I removed our aerial ball before we went in or we would have lost it, no question) -


- and the back windscreen wiper only just survived because a huge water buffalo scared the monkeys away at the critical moment -


- although some people weren't so lucky (zoom in to see this car in front of us lost their back wiper entirely) -

- the next (and much calmer) section was the large paddock where many more quadruped herbivores wander around in large groups, ruminating and posing -


- and then to another of the really good bits of the day, the deer feeding, you buy a cup of what look like rabbit pellets for a pound (which comes complete with an antibacterial wipe (for afterwards) -

- and then you spend the next ten minutes with your hand being completely swallowed by slathering beasts (and then discovering that the antibacterial wipe is sorely inadequate to the cleansing task at hand, so bring wet wipes with you if you are reading this in advance of your visit) -

- you then trundle past some sleepy Rhino and Pelican -


- and then you are warned, take your last breath of fresh air, it's windows closed for the rest of the visit, first past some extremely sleepy overfed tigers -

- then past some extremely sleepy overfed lions -

- then past some extremely playful wakeful lions, who were so hungry they were trying to sneak up on flocks of birds (and failing miserably) -

- (oh and at this point some *idiot* woman drove up with her young child hanging out of the passenger side window trying to take pictures, only to be yelled at extremely sternly by the game keeper in his van, she, obviously a little flustered, went to pull away and nearly crashed into a car coming up on the outside, can you imagine the insurance claim form?)...Anyway, then it was into the last area, to see some Timber Wolves busy dismembering a carcass -


- and then that was it, a small queue to exit the park itself, and then on to the other attractions -

- but more on that in another post... ;)