UK Tourist & Leisure Attractions - Longleat

It took about 1½ hours to travel through Longleat Safari Park to see all the wonderful wildlife including giant giraffes, meddling monkeys, zany zebras, desirable deer, wolves, bison, lions and tigers.

This handsome giraffe found it handy being able to stick your neck out and get food from where other animals cannot reach.  We weren't quite this close to the guy, the camera zoom helped here!

Apparently the animals have right of way in Longleat Safari Park, this loopy llama either had zero road sense or an attitude problem sitting there slap bang in the middle of the drive-through roadway!  Moving on...

...and ... ahhh, what's this?  Mum and dad were having a chat with baby monkey, probably teaching him the art of stripping stuff from visitors' cars and selling it back to them at the exit!

Here's a monkey doing something on the roof of that vehicle!  Yes, that's why we chose to travel through Longleat Safari Park on the safari bus rather than take the car in, smart eh!

We could make the tiresome joke about the camels with the hump, but you've heard it all before so we won't.  It was good to see the animals had plenty of room to roam freely at Longleat.

This tractor was nudging the rhinos around the field at Longleat, we couldn't quite see why.  Now for a fact: Longleat opened in 1966 and was the first ever drive-through Safari Park outside Africa.

Deer oh dear!  Now these deer certainly knew where their lunch came from.  We stopped here for quite a while to feed these guys, and there sure were many deer to feed!  And another...

...'ahhh' moment here as the little girl in this car fed the cute deer.  Smart move Longleat; selling visitors animal feed then getting them to feed their wildlife too!  Next up was lion territory and...

...this magnificent lion's doing all right with the girls, with six wives to chose from.  As we watched he got up to have a stretch and wander, at which time his ladies became a bit anxious he was leaving them!

Now how's this for a front garden?  After the Safari Park we took a tour round the impressive Longleat House and saw many portraits of the Marquis of Bath showing his rather weird dress sense off to a tee.

Next we took a trip on The Longleat Railway which trundles along this narrow gauge track for a mile or so.  The lesser spotted Belinda is on the near right ready to jump aboard for a ride.

Here we both are then, on the Longleat train waiting for departure.  As you can see we're in our wet weather gear, such a contrast to the sun we enjoyed just a few weeks previously in Dorset!

The Longleat Railway ran round the extensive grounds and alongside the lake.  We didn't see any of the seals in the lake, maybe they were keeping out of the rain to stay dry.

Here's a general view of the main concourse at Longleat.  There were plenty of eating places, but Mike was disappointed to find that the Longleat Arms pub he remembered from a youthful visit was no more.

Despite the rain, we enjoyed our visit to Longleat Safari Park.  There's plenty to see and do at this wonderful Wiltshire attraction, we just wished the weather had been more suitable to explore the Hedge Maze, the Butterfly Garden and take a cruise on the Safari Boats.  Oh well...

The Longleat website is an excellent resource for potential visitors, you can read our review plus many other websites in our UK tourist resources.

So... just got to visit the shop the Longleat monkeys run at the exit and buy back the items those cheeky monkeys swiped as we drove round earlier...