Big Brigadier Goes on Safari!

Right... time for a catch-up!
Owing to the festive season my blog posts have been fairly scarce (well, non-existent!). So I've got a few trips to write about to bring everything up to date.

First off was our trip to Longleat Safari Park in late November. Leaving work early on the Friday evening we headed out into the heart of Wiltshire for a two night stay at Brokerswood Country Park Caravan Site (www.brokerswood.net). Located just 20 minutes drive from the safari park, Brokerswood was a quiet site, off the beaten track, but with all the facilities we needed for a comfy stay. Open all year, it had a cafe & shop on-site, and 15 minutes walk away was a lovely village pub called The Kicking Donkey (www.kickingdonkey.net), where we spent our first evening having a lovely dinner and a few drinks.

Annie Chilling at The Kicking Donkey

After an early night we awoke refreshed from a good night's sleep in Big Brig, had breakfast & freshened up, and then made our way to Longleat.

Longleat Safari & Adventure Park (www.longleat.co.uk) is normally closed over winter, but for the first time ever it was opening in 2011 under the name of 'Christmas at Longleat', which featured a Christmas market, Europe's tallest artificial Christmas tree, an outdoor skating rink, and the manor house decorated in the style of fairy tale & Christmas stories.

Our first priority though was to see the animals, and we certainly weren't disappointed. Riding around the safari park in Big Brig was a great experience, which provided much better views than if we had been in a normal car.
Favourite animals were the lions & tigers, camels and Big Anne the elephant!

Playing a game of chicken with a camel!

 

 

 

Sitting no more than five feet from Big Brigadier!

We decided to skip the Monkey drive-through... knowing how mischievous they can be we feared for Big Brig's TV aerial and windscreen wipers!
The safari drive took us a couple of hours. You are encouraged to stop & start as often as you like to admire the animals, and a free CD provides narration as you traverse around the lovely large enclosures, viewing the animals in surrounding that matches their natural environment as close as is possible.
All the animals looked content, and are probably as curious of us humans as we are of them!
After the safari we attempted the maze, which when planted was supposedly the largest hedge maze in the World!

After the maze we took a boat trip to see the gorilla, who lives on an island in the middle of Longleat Lake with all the mod-cons, including central heating & satellite TV!

The lake itself is home to a hippopotamus and numerous seals, and whilst the hippo was hiding in the shallow mud banks, the seals had great delight in putting on a show for us whilst we traversed the lake. 

After the lake cruise we visited the petting zoo, where you can get up close & personal to lots of cute, cuddly, and invariably less dangerous animals!

 

Our trip to Longleat continued with a tour around the manor house & grounds, which were wonderfully decorated, each room depicting a different fairly tale or Christmas story. Every room had a tour guide, who were dressed in costumes such as Peter Pan, Cinderella, Scrooge, and Snow White.
With the daylight fading we enjoyed the tree-lighting ceremony, which involved a 15 minute music & lights display to bring an end to a wonderful trip!

We headed back to Brokerswood Caravan Park with great memories of a festive day out. Dinner that evening was courtesy of Chef Annie, who cooked up a feast of home-made lasagne. Yummy!
The following morning we packed up and headed home, our heads full of wild animals & mazes, and our thoughts of where next Big Brig would be taking us!