Longleat Lion.

Another day, another outing, well we are on holiday and, this time to visit the safari park at Longleat House. It was the first stately home to be opened to the public (1949) and in 1966 the first safari park outside Africa was opened here and became one of the inspirations for Tom Sharpe’s book, “Blott on the Landscape.”
 
The drive around the park was pretty good although we were disappointed that we didn’t see the wolves but then the animals don’t perform to order. In general, the big carnivores  were lazing around in the sun, which is what they should be doing. The capuchin monkeys were fun, climbing over the cars and dis-assembling them; they didn’t do too much damage and Mrs TD was able to complete repairs once we were in the safety of the carpark - and the washers managed to clean their pee off the windscreen.
 
Our final excursion was the river safari which was shambolic; we waited well over an hour after booking in for the trip and received no information until we were on the boat for its short trip. It might have been short, but it was spectacular with the sea lions (see extra) coming right up to the boat begging for the supplementary rations being thrown in by the children.
 
The blip is of the lion puppet roaming the picnic area in an uncannily realistic fashion – apart from stopping to let children stroke him – and he even posed for Sis to take his picture.


I've just posted yesterday's, "Saint Helen's Church."