Longleat Safari & Wildlife Park

The main reason for our little getaway the other weekend was to go to Longleat! I've always wanted to visit here ever since Animal Park (with Kate Humble and Ben Fogle presenting) was on the television when I was younger. It seemed amazing to me that you could just drive through the animal's enclosures and have such a close up experience from the comfort of your car. They also have a fantastic range of animals, some of which I'd never seen before. 

As experiences go it is relatively pricey per adult but we were able to get the tickets through Tesco Clubcard and, actually, now that we've been we would happily pay the entry fee for our next visit as we think it is totally worth the money in comparison to other attractions which charge a lot for not very little. 

On arrival at the estate - which is vast with a huge entrance way off its own roundabout - we drove past the "house" which we hadn't paid to get into and continued straight on for the two miles it takes to the start of the safari drive. Imagine having enough grounds to have to drive for miles to get to another part of your garden? We passed, quite literally, a small farming hamlet/village on our way there, all within the confines of the Longleat estate. The safari itself was amazing, starting with Giraffes, Zebra and Ostriches. We will have to go back though as we missed a section, not realising that you had to park up to visit smaller animals in this area, with a walk-through Lemur enclosure, and be able to feed the Giraffes yourself so I am miffed about that. 

Once you pass this part there is nowhere to stop either as you are constantly moving between the enclosures and it took us about two hours to get all of the way round! Unfortunately the big cats were a bit stressful for us because Finley woke up screaming for food and we couldn't stop to get his bottle (or him from the back) so all of us just had to put up with it and whizz as fast as we could, at the maximum 15mph speed limit, through the lions, cheetahs, hyenas, wolves and whoever else we whizzed past. All the more reason to have to go back when he's bigger and can appreciate it more!

The monkey habitat was one of my favourites. There are lots of warnings at the entrance about losing parts of your car, and stray number plates or wipers stuck up around the gate which had been collected once the monkeys had finished playing with them. Cars with roof racks are given extra warning but our car is quite smooth and contained and the monkeys weren't really all that interested in us in comparison to some other vehicles which had aerials and about six monkeys hanging off it!

The family groups and tiny babies were so lovely to watch; little ones playing with each other, trying daredevil tricks on branches, or just picking up random bits of stuff and proudly carrying them around like trophies. 

On the way out you have to be inspected by a member of the team who has a pole they bang on the ground around the cars with monkeys still hanging off them to make them get off. I wonder if they ever manage to escape out of their enclosure? Once you have no monkeys on you, you are allowed to leave, and the gate is opened.

In the deer section you could buy pots of pellets to feed to them with from the car! You just buy your pot at a little hut, drive to a small carpark section, wind down your window and the car will fill with velvety snouts trying to snaffle from your pot. One of the deer at Reece's window sneezed and kindly filled the front of the card with deer snot! We had to give the dashboard a good cleaning when we got home!

Having completed the safari we then had to dash to the carpark and feed a very hot and irritable and hungry baby (who is all smiles when he has a full tummy!). The zoo itself is also very big and I know there are some places that we missed but there are fantastic habitats to look at and walk through. You can walk through with the meerkats, pay for pots of sweet liquid to feed to the Lorikeets (little parrots), chat up close with some bigger parrots who stand on little plinths under weather shades - the grey one above was very chatty and would say hello, walk through the Koala house and loads more. 

It was a really hot day so a lot of the animals were sort of conked out somewhere or being watered by a keeper. The Anteater had obviously just had a load of water sprayed into their enclosure and he or she was just digging into it and having a cooling mud bath. Some of the animals really liked the heat though obviously and were just lying out in the sunshine soaking up the rays or snoozing in the shade. 

This is a Binturong (also known as a bearcat) from Southeast Asia. There were two of them sharing an enclosure with a couple of otters but this one was making the most hilarious expressions and looked like it was really enjoying itself on its platform! When we walked past it later one of the keepers was watering it with a hose to cool it down. 

One of my other favourite parts was going on the boat on the lake. There are two boats that do trips around the lake which contain two hippos and five sea lions!! You also pass an island with beautiful black and white monkeys, and the gorillas! 

The sea lions were hilarious, darting around the boat and making lots of noise, especially when we got to the 'feeding place' where you could purchase little pots of fish to throw overboard for the sea lions to catch. It was a bit gross to be picking up the slippery fish but the sea lions were going nuts, chasing each other out of the way and barking/honking at the boat and each other. 

We got quite a good view of several of the gorillas as well, one asleep holding his foot, one sitting all hunched on a log and one wandering around. 

It was fairly cool on the water with the motionless hippos, statuesque herons, various ducks and a family of swans. We would love to go back as we missed the farmyard and the train, a little bit of the safari and possibly some other enclosures in the walk around zoo. You need more than one day to see it! Plus there's the house you can visit too - what an amazing place to visit.