On the Wild Side

A couple of weekends ago I went to Longleat for the day! I've been saying I would go for years and for years I have lived fairly close by but I still never went. Tesco does a deal so you can swap your clubcard vouchers for deals and they are worth four times the value of the vouchers. One of their deals is a ticket to Longleat so over the summer I exchanged my clubcard vouchers for two tickets to Longleat, one for me and one for my housemate. Again we kept saying that we would go but never getting round to it! But finally we agreed on a date and although it was the middle of October it turned out to be a glorious day with bright sunshine.





We had a fantastic day and managed to get to do lots of things. It is not just a safari park but they also have Longleat House which is where the Marques of Bath lives, a huge Maze and lots of grounds. The animals were fantastic and I loved being able to get so close to them and seeing them in a way you don't normally get to do so in a zoo.






My favourite was the Gorilla. He is 49 years old, which in gorilla years is 98, and lives on his own because his partner died a few years ago. He lives on an island in a lake which you go on a boat to go around. There are seals and sealions in the lake but the gorilla doesn't like them and if they are being too rowdy he throws sticks and stones at them! He has a little hut on his island which has a television in. When he was younger he had an operation and had to be kept in for 6 months so to stop him getting bored they gave him a telly. When he got better though he wouldn't let them take the telly out so he still has it. In fact he has a better tv than me - it's a flat screen, HD, 32 inch, sky plus tv! His favourite programme is apparently Spongebob Square Pants! He looks like he is such a character and he reminded me of the old grumpy man in the disney film UP!






The Maze was also really good and we managed to get thoroughly lost as you should do in any maze worth its while! In the end we found ourselves back at the beginning and started again. This time though we used the technique that we both knew about how to find the centre of mazes but had never tried before. It worked and we were glad to know that some of those urban myths aren't actually myths but are true after all!