The last (holi)day - Longleat Safari park.

You have to be out of your accommodation by 10 o'clock on the morning of your departure, so we had a plan that we would pack up the car, leave it in the car park and cycle to Longleat Safari Park on the Friday.  This worked really well, except that when we got to the entrance and showed the girls' Blue Peter badges we discovered that they are only valid with an adult paying full entrance price and since we'd booked A & my tickets through Center Parcs at a 30% discount we had to pay for the girls.  It does tell you this on their website if you search, but unfortunately we hadn't, so we ended up having to pay for the girls at almost full price (the lady did charge us the online price which is 15% cheaper than the turn up and pay price).  Next time we'll know that it works out cheaper to pay full whack for A & me and get the girls in free.  Ho hum.

After paying, we were faced with the drive to the house and safari park.  On bikes it is really good fun as it's really rather steep in places and almost entirely downhill.  We locked our bikes up and went to book tickets for the bus around the safari park.  The bus was due soon after, so we went and waited at the stop and were soon heading towards the animals.

Wallabies.

Ring-tailed lemurs.

An obligatory 'booboo' photo.

Giraffes.

Tapirs.

Rhesus macaque monkeys.

 The monkeys, sheltering from the brief shower of rain, demonstrated their camouflage rather well!

White rhino.

 White being a misnomer, due a mistranslation of 'weit' meaning wide and referring to their mouths!

Anne, the elephant.

A rescued circus elephant, she has severe arthritis in her back legs due to the tricks she was made to perform, so is kept on sand so she doesn't hurt herself because she drags her hind legs when she walks.

Siberian tiger.

Two of the smaller of the two prides of lions.

Three of the larger pride looking through to the others.

 The lions here still exhibit territorial behaviour, as the two prides are in neighbouring areas.

Some of the cubs playing.

Driving through the lion enclosure, K commented "I can see its penis!, which caused some amusement.

Cheetah.

Wolf.

After the bus dropped us off, we found a picnic table, had some lunch and discussed our priorities for things to see in the afternoon.  We were unanimous in wanting to see the Batcave, so we headed there first.

They were Egyptian fruit bats and while not enormous, they were certainly bigger than the bats we saw on our batwalk in the autumn.  We learned that if you see a bat hanging the 'right way up' then if you are standing underneath it you really should move, since that means it's about to wee or poo!

When we came out of the Batcave the girls wanted to go into the 'mirror maze'.  When we emerged from there it was raining a bit, so we headed for the house, but when it came to going in, K decided she really didn't want to, because she 'might see horrible things' (by which she generally means paintings depicting people getting hurt or killed, which you do see quite frequently in stately homes).  So she stayed outside and ran up and down 600 steps while A, M & I were inside!  As it happened there were very few 'horrible things', but she was happy and the rain had stopped, so she didn't get wet either.

We had agreed that we would like to go on the boat trip and see the penguins before we needed to head back to our bikes.  M in particular would have liked to go in the big hedge maze, but we didn't have time for that as well unfortunately.  We saw more smaller animals on the way to the boat.

Meetkats.

Mara.

 The main attractions to see on the boat trip are hippos, gorillas and sealions.  Unfortunately the hippos were hiding, but we did see the other two.

Gorillas - I think it was eating bark!

One of the sealions.

 On the way to the penguins, we passed some very cute and nippy little monkeys.

I think they're marmosets, I couldn't see the sign!

The penguins were great.  The ones we met outside clearly enjoy interacting with the visitors, as they are completely free to come and go as they please (you can see the penguins size and shape holes in the fence) and talking to the keeper there, some of them come out every day.  Up close you can see their feathers, which are really small and densely packed.

M & a penguin.

Both girls and the same penguin!

We just had time to walk through and aviary with some stunning birds in on the way back to our bikes.

Rainbow lorikeets.

And peek in at some ferrets.

Then the ride back up the drive began, although it was so steep that for the vast majority of the way it was a push back up the drive.  The bit from the entrance to Longleat back to Center Parcs was fun though, as that had been a relatively gentle uphill on a path through the edge of a wood and was now obviously downhill.

Once back in the carpark, it was a question of loading the bikes back up and driving about 40 minutes or so to A's cousin and family, where we were staying the night.  They have a nearly 5 year old girl, F, who was about 16 months old last time we saw them and a just about to turn 2 year old boy, G, who we met for the first time.  He was very funny and, having taken a shine to A, insisted on 'Anna' blowing on his food when it was too hot!  The girls all got on really well and disappeared to play happily by themselves in F's room.

We said goodbye to them on Saturday morning, after F had gone off for her dancing and drama class with her dad, and headed home stopping for a very nice meal in a random pub en route.  We got home mid-afternoon and started on the washing, while K & M got busy with preparations for something they're planning for the HE group we go to on Monday and got excited because they are having their very first 'proper' sleepover tonight.