Love for Longleat.

I think all weekends should definitely be at least three days long, what a wonderful birthday weekend I've had. The best thing about having such an action-packed Friday for my birthday was getting to go home, head out to dinner and then realise I still had two whole days left to chill out and relax.

We were so lucky with the weather, Warminster must have known it was my birthday because it rained all the way there, yet the second we set foot out of the car when we arrived at the safari park it was glorious sunshine and it stayed like that for the rest of the day.

In case you can't tell, Moon treated me to Longleat Safari Park for my big 24th birthday on Friday and we had a nice day out but I'm probably put off having children for at least the next 100 years.



*Note to self: When going anywhere that passes Stone Henge, avoid Stone Henge.


Beautiful Wiltshire countryside.


Dramatic skies over the Longleat grounds.


It was pretty busy but I do enjoy zoos and being able to see so many animals in one place. Saying that, the animal rights activist in me did have a few issues with this place. I'd definitely recommend that they either get rid of their elephant or get more elephants for her to play with, she seemed pretty listless when we passed her on the safari and some of the enclosures were a little small and dirty, even the new penguin cave.

We didn't manage to get to Gorilla Island or to see the hippos and sealions just because the queue was crazy but I'd still say it was worth the money, I mean I did get the feed some deer - even it wasn't on the safari as promised, it was pretty fun to do something so different from normal, as we don't really do things like this together that often, what a treat!


Sweet CD narrated by Kate Humble.


I got over that bridge as quickly as possible anyway due to my silly fear of heights but Moon managed to get stuck behind the slowest children in the world and was on there for double the time.



The lemurs were quite a scream, particularly the baby one that was leaping everywhere, I was pretty impressed with how close we were allowed to get to them.



Rule No.1 – Bring a picnic, the food isn't great and is a rip off. We paid £14.50 for a toasted sandwich, a wrap (from a packet), two bags of crisps, a bottle of water and this nice bottle of orange squash.




Feeding some kids. ♥





We thought the warning about the monkeys were just a precaution, turns out they were pretty accurate.



Good job this wasn't part of our car.


This was our car though, note the poor windscreen washer...




Floppy hump.





Sad old Anne.




I do enjoy fawning over how like house cats big cats are.



♥




Assessing the damage, darn monkeys(!)


Discovering a new animal called a binturong (or bear cat).



The mara pen was pretty small compared to when we saw them at Marwell, such neat animals all the same though.




Moon's impression of a stingray, on the assessment that they aren't very friendly looking animals.



Stumbling upon Longleat's Pet Cemetery, creepy.




In the Bat Cave, Moon was not cool with them flying in his pretty hair. ♥



I have cats, Moon has chickens, it would have been neat to hold them in the petting zoo part.



♥















Pre-birthday meal beer.
Feeding the deer was definitely my highlight, although walking around Longleat House and its grounds was really enjoyable too, I really would recommend it but I'd definitely say a lot of it is to do with luck - like not being able to feed the giraffes because one of them happened to go into labour... I don't think it would have worked out as well if the weather had stayed as miserable as it was in the morning though, so sunshine is a definite must.

One thing you can probably guarantee is that monkeys will break parts of your car - it was a nice way to spend my levelling up turning 24 and I think it would be nice to go there again in the Autumn when they have some fun-sounding night time activities (and fireworks(!))