Longleat House

When Ben is home we like to alternate between little vacations and big vacations. As he travels so much it is not always a break for him to travel even more when he is home. For one of our little vacations we took a overnight trip to Somerset. The sites we wanted to hit were Stonehenge and Longleat house, both an easy drive from London. So we rented a fiat500 and hit the road. 

We had half a day blocked out to visit Stonehenge. Turns out you can see it really well from the road.  Everyone slows down when passing it so you have a great view, and we decided that we were content with just seeing it from the road. There are so many druid formations throughout the UK we decided not to drop £30 on getting up close and personal with this one. So that left us with an afternoon quite free. Well luckily we were only 40 minuets away from one of our favorite cities, Bath. So we just kept on driving and headed to Bath for some shopping and lunch. 

Bath Abbey is so beautiful. I love the carved wooden doors. The weather was typically British so we walked around outside while it was clear and then headed into the shops while it was raining.

We have always taken the train to Bath, and it was fun to have a car as we could drive up the hills in Somerset and have beautiful vistas of the countryside. We stopped at this cemetery located on a hill and were delightfully surprised with the view. 

Yup, that view. 

There was an older part of the cemetery that was a bit more overgrown and had these headstones with moss growing all over them.

After Bath and Somerset we headed to our hotel for a relaxing evening. The hotel has many beautiful walking paths around it so once we had settled a little we went for a nice 2 hour walk around the area.

Wild blackberries! 

The next morning we packed up the fiat and headed to Longleat. Longleat has a lot going on. It has a zoo, safari park, hedge maze, and you can tour the main house. I am glad that we planned on spending our whole day there because it took all day to see everything. 

Summer tourist season was over so we had a lot of things to ourselves. Here we are at the centre of the hedge maze. Ben is really good a mazes and we completed it in no time. Now for a lot of pictures of animals and birds. 

Grumpy bunny with one flop ear. 

Fennec fox!! This is one of the cutest animals and I had never seen one in real life before. I was quite excited and we had to watch them for a long while.

 This sting ray was being silly. It kept jumping half way out of the water and flapping around. It was kinda cool to see its creepy mouth and underside. 

The penguins were another favorite of mine. There was a penguin path that we could walk on and the penguins walked on this path as well. Look, they even had a penguin shaped exit and entrance into their exhibit. 

After the penguins I fed some lorries. You hold a cup of nectar and they come and eat it out of your hand. Ben took some more flattering pictures of me feeding them but this pictures most accurately represents how I felt during the process. 

Can you spot the baby anteater? It is riding on its mama's back. 

What an funny little statue. 

The grounds also had a pet cemetery for the personal pets of the Lord and Ladies who have lived in Longleat- which is the home to the Lord of Bath. 

Next we headed to the safari park! Hey giraffe! 

There was a monkey drive through where you can drive and have monkeys come up and jump on and around your car. Here is a monkey playing with our hood and trying to pull off anything he can. There were lots of warning that we were driving though at our own risk and that monkeys are known to cause minor damage to cars. Thankfully we had no incident and enjoyed the monkeys clambering around the little fiat.  

A silver backed gorilla. This gorilla is the second 'known' oldest gorilla in the world. He lives on a little island in a lake all by himself and likes it that way. 

Another not quite as old silver backed gorilla. 

Some seals swimming alongside the boat tour we took. 

And a hippopotamus! 

Longleat house is off in the distance. 

Before touring the house we saw that there was a mirror maze. This was probably meant more for children but we totally rocked it! We found the sword and the crown hidden in the maze in about two minutes so we then took some mirror photos. 

And finally the house itself. This is one of the nicest stately homes I have been to. The bottom two floors are the state rooms and a few guest rooms and the top floors are the private apartments of the Lord of Bath who still lives there. 

The library. 

The tapestry room .

The Lord of Bath's family tree. This is only a small portion of it, it was over 10 feet tall and about 6 feet wide. It makes me want a family tree that looks like this.

To sum it all up Longleat is pretty cool. If you are into animals then this is a place the visit. Even though the zoo wasn't big Ben and I were both impressed with the animals there and the quality of the exhibits. There were zoo keepers everywhere and the animals were being stimulated and all appeared quite happy and healthy. It is worth the trip is you want a fun day with animals and also a tour of a beautiful home in the scenic British countryside.