make up for the last seven months of doing not much at all... So with a little bit of last minute planning we set off on Friday morning with the idea of spending the day in Bath... Over the next couple of days we had the first snow we'd seen since the winter previous, though it didn't settle.Almost there, we came across signs for Longleat House... A house and park that is used to film a wildlife show on BBC2. We decided to take a detour to check it out... and actually spent all day there!!
Longleat House and park has quite a colourful past and is simply magnificent to see in person! But this was only the beginning... On the estate we also found a miniature train ride, which looked a bit like Thomas the Tank Engine, and took us around part of the estate, past a lake, home to some seals, with a gorilla living on an island in the centre... Quite surreal! There was also a tropical butterfly house (Russ went in but I waited outside as I'm actually terrified of butterflies...as ridiculous as that sounds...). There are a whole lot of fun things to keep a family entertained for an entire day!
The best part however, was the safari park! For only 11 quid each you can drive your car around the park, through all the animal enclosures. Some parts you can have your windows down, such as with the zebras, giraffes, camels, and when feeding the deer. Those such as the monkeys, lions, tigers and wolves, obviously you can't... though we did open our windows to take some decent photos!
You can take as long as you like driving through and park up to watch the animals when you like. By the time we'd finished, we had had the car slightly pulled apart by monkeys (it was funny when other people's cars were being pulled to pieces, but not so funny when it was ours!!) and we'd been covered by deer pallets with deer pushing their heads inside the car!! Was an excellent day!!
From there we headed to Russ' eldest brother's place in Bristol, where we based ourselves. 
Saturday was pretty action-packed. We took off in the morning to do our sight-seeing in Bath, the beautiful city based on the thermal springs, famous for its Roman Bath Houses. If we had planned a bit further ahead we could have organised to go and bathe in the thermal spas, but we'll be doing that next time! Instead we took in the sights of those beautiful old bath houses, the Royal Cresent, The Circus, and the REAL River Avon!! It really is a beautiful
city!!
Saturday was pretty action-packed. We took off in the morning to do our sight-seeing in Bath, the beautiful city based on the thermal springs, famous for its Roman Bath Houses. If we had planned a bit further ahead we could have organised to go and bathe in the thermal spas, but we'll be doing that next time! Instead we took in the sights of those beautiful old bath houses, the Royal Cresent, The Circus, and the REAL River Avon!! It really is a beautiful
city!!From there we drove south west to Glastonbury, a little town famous for its massive music festival. Beside the town is Glastonbury Tor... A hill that just pops up with nothing else around it. On top of it is a monument of which the hill and itself have a Pagan mythalogical background. Pagan weddings take place on top of the hill these days. It has unbelievable views from the top and 
quite an eerie feel to it.
quite an eerie feel to it.Onwards and upwards from there to Wookey Hole Caves. The caves are over a million years old and divers have so far discovered 25 chambers. On the walking tour, we were able to see perhaps five of those chambers, some of the first chambers were flooded. It's amazing to think how far under the Earth's surface you can get in these caves, and how scary it is!! Inside the caves 
they have designated areas for maturing cheese. As the chambers stay at a constant 11 degrees, the caves are the perfect environment for this. It does mean that some of the caves stink!! On our way out we bought some of this cheese, and it's delicious!!
they have designated areas for maturing cheese. As the chambers stay at a constant 11 degrees, the caves are the perfect environment for this. It does mean that some of the caves stink!! On our way out we bought some of this cheese, and it's delicious!!On our way back up towards Bristol we drove through Cheddar Gorge, Britain's own Grand Canyon. This is also where Cheddar cheese comes from!! The gorge is stunning!! It actually reminds me a little of somewhere like 
Arrowtown in New Zealand, a bit!
Arrowtown in New Zealand, a bit!Our last stop for the day was Clevedon Pier, where Russ' eldest brother, Bruce, and Katy were married in December 2005. We arrived just as the sun was setting. What a beautiful place to be married! The photos really say it all...
After such a full-on day we retired back to Bristol for a good night's sleep. Sunday was to be our final day of adventures before we headed back to little Portsmouth... We decided on a tour around the Cotswolds, as I've wanted to go there since before I moved to the UK! It's full of beautifull little villages built with stone and thatched rooves. We 
drove straight to Bourton-on-the-Water first, as this is a particularly famous town in the Cotswolds for the sweet little river running through it. We also found out it's the home of Brum, the children's TV car.
drove straight to Bourton-on-the-Water first, as this is a particularly famous town in the Cotswolds for the sweet little river running through it. We also found out it's the home of Brum, the children's TV car.From here we drove through back roads, through lovely little villages, to Bibury, where we found a trout farm, where you can catch your own or feed them... We
fed them instead, and Russ managed to be bitten by one!!From here we slowly made our way home to Portsmouth. We had an excellent weekend away!! It was a great way to end our stay down here and spend our last holiday together for a while!! Now we have a week left before Russ starts a new job and I fly off to China!!
You can see all of my photos from this weekend here.
