Monday 4 March 2019

A Week in Somerset #3 - Longleat Festival of Light Part 1

Hi there everyone 😀

After finishing our drive through The Winter Safari, we got parked up and decided to see what we could find.

To be honest it was more than a little overwhelming ... should we eat? Should we look at more animals? Should we do the house? Should we do the river cruise? Should we look at the lanterns? Or should we just wander around completely aimlessly?

We opted for the latter ... trying to get our bearings and take everything in ... The lanterns were all over the place and looked amazing in the bright sunshine and, whilst we knew they would look fab in the dark when lit up, we were both just getting a little bit stressed at the numbers of people starting to build up.
After a bit of a wander around, working out what was where, we decided to have a refreshment stop while we worked out what to do next.

We opted for the Cellar Cafe which was tucked round the side of the house. It was pretty busy, though we managed to find some nice calm sofas right through the back. We just had a sandwich and came up with a plan of action.

We decided that we would start the rest of our visit by walking the lantern route in the daylight so we knew where everything was ready for the big switch on at 4.00pm. We would then see what else there was to see depending on how much time we had left.

I will apologise now for the sheer quantity of lantern photos. We were just enthralled by them and in my next post you will get to see them again ... switched on, so if you aren't bothered by lanterns, you may want to bypass this post ... though there were pretty spectacular.

The theme for 2018's Festival of Light promised to take us on a fantastic voyage, with over 1000 breath-taking illuminated lanterns, spread over 30 acres of Longleat's landscaped grounds. We were invited to join a thrilling expedition around the world, journeying through time and space with three characters ... brother and sister Harry and Bea and their terrier companion, Monty.

Our journey started in prehistoric times where we were surrounded by dinosaurs ...

We then followed Harry, Bea and Monty as they took to the skies ...
... landing in ancient Egypt ...
... where they trekked by camel to the Great Pyramid and Sphinx of Giza ...
 
Next it was a short hop on the Longleat Flyer ...
... to the snow and ice of the North Pole ...
From the North Pole we found ourselves heading for the Rain Forest ...
... where we were surrounded by wondrous creatures ...
 
It was then aboard the rocket ship ...
.. for a quick jaunt around The Solar System ...
Before we knew it we were back down to Earth and in India ...
... where we admired the Lotus flowers and temples ...
... and were in awe at the wild animals roaming the grass ...

From India we wandered past the most stunning peacock ...
... and these flowers from South America ...
 
We saw Medieval knights on horseback ...
... surrounding the castle's battlements with bows and swords drawn ...
We saw Harry, Bea and Monty take a flight in a hot air balloon ...
... and joined them on the most wonderful trip under the sea ...
... which was our favourite part of the lantern exhibition ... it was just stunning and we could only imagine what it would all look like lit up later ...
So, having had a good walk around all of the lanterns we still had plenty of time to check out a few of the other attractions ...

We started off by heading for the Animal Discovery Centre where there are plenty of smaller animals to have a look at, though it was too cold for many to be out today ...
We did really enjoy The Jungle Cruise though ... there was a bit of a queue, but it was worth it. It was quite exciting boarding the boat for a cruise up the lake, past gorilla island where Nico, the Western lowland gorilla, lived until January 2018, when he sadly passed away. Nico was one of the oldest gorillas in the world and arrived at the park in 1986 from Switzerland ...
We got to see the hippos, from a safe distance ...
... and the sea lions were more than happy to tag alongside ...
When disembarking the boat we got to see the red pandas which were a real treat ...



By now we were pretty much all walked out and in need of further sustenance so we decided to have a very quick look round Longleat House, which was decked out for a 1920s Christmas before trying to find somewhere to eat before the big light switch on.

There wasn't much of the house that was open to visitors and there were no photos to be taken inside so it didn't take us that long and there was not that much to see.

The grounds were looking lovely though, very autumnal ...
 

We ended up eating in Pizza Piazza, which was very busy, but the food was good and reasonably priced and it was good to take the weight off our legs for a bit.

We had just finished eating when the clock clicked over to 4pm and, right on cue, the lights clicked on. It was time for round 2, but I'll tell you about that next time 😁

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2 comments:

  1. Elena ... the lanterns were amazing ... wait until you see what they looked like in the dark and all lit up ... magical 😃

    ReplyDelete

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