Briport

We were heading from London to Bridport to meet Gitte and Tim and their daughter Samantha. We had a stop off at Stonehenge for a look, we didn’t go into the compound as you couldn’t walk amongst the stones, you could only walk up to them. So we saved ourselves 23 pounds for another day and took some pictures from 2 meters behind people that were taking photos inside the fence. It was impressive, but I couldn’t help but think that other wonders are more impressive. Anyway, we didn’t know what to do in the area after that – as I thought it would take 1-2 hours there, so we thought about buying a heritage pass for 21 pounds, but we didn’t really know what to see in the area anyway. Mostly things like castles, and abbey’s and old ruins etc. We have seen a lot of these things, so we picked two (where robin hood the film was shot for a little bit) and another castle – I don’t care enough about it to say where we actually went. They were both closed so we went to our next host’s house – really to end a counter productive day…

That night we went to the local pub for dinner, having a curry for 5 pounds which included a drink which was good value. We spoke to our hosts for a fair while – Gitte being from Sweden and moving to England about 20 years ago (still has a little of her accent). She loved to talk, and we were answering her enthusiastic questions for the next couple of days. We slept in their son’s room whom had moved out of home, which was cosy and comfy.

The next day was the best day that we had for a while – going to the Safari Park in Longleat with a stopoff at supermarket to pick up lunch. We arrived about 11:00.
Apparently they had tigers and lions – but in my experience they have been sleeping when seeing them. There was a walking section as well as a driving section – we did the walking part first. We saw animals that we hadn’t seen before, Giant Anteaters, Quates (or something like that), binturong, and other south American animals that looked so weird so us. We also saw chipmunks, meercats and other animals that were free to run around free and you could walk around within their enclosure. They also had a butterfly house, and a bird show where we saw a large parrot (forget what they were called) play basketball and dribble a soccer ball. A few mazes, a deer enclosure a virtual money helicopter ride! and we were then onto the car section. We saw close up Giraffes (the last time I saw them I was in primary school) and then saw Rhino’s (All the animals were really really close) and then we wntered the money section. Well – the monkeys jumped all over our car, and took to everything that we had outside the car – chewing the aerials, pulling on the windscreen wipers, and pulling on the window seals. Only luck kept us from losing anything. Stupid monkeys. We then went on to the Tiger Enclosure. Amazing. They were playing like small cats – running in and out of the cars, stalking each other, chasing the rangers van and walking extremely close to our car, which let us understand how big they actually are. We then went into the Lion enclosure, they weren’t as playful as the tigers, but the cubs were. We then saw the wolf enclosure, which we were treated to a cool site, the pack was standing in the middle of the road howling. It was pretty cool – until this idiot ranger came up – and blocked our view of seeing the dogs. Then when I put my window down to take a photo around her car, she then reversed back madly and told me to put it up – the dogs would attack me…. Hahahaha. Yes of course they would.  So that was a little bit of a sour note to an excellent day. We drove back to where we were staying and we were then treated to an awesome home cooked roast dinner!! Woop!! Yay for couch surfing hey. Roast vegies, pork and a pastie with fetta cheese and spinach. Bed time was about 1am after talking for a while after dinner. Andrew was tired and went to bed quickly after dinner..

I have left out two days, but I will get to them.