Thursday 7 March 2019

A Week in Somerset #4 - Longleat Festival of Light Part 2

Hi again everyone 😀

On Monday I shared with you the first part of our experience of the 2018 Longleat Festival of Light. Now it's time for the last leg and grand finale of our visit.
It was 4pm and, right on cue,  we saw the lanterns all click into action just as we were leaving the Pizza Piazza, ready for our second circuit.
This time we started out under the sea and if we'd thought the lanterns were impressive in the daylight we were completely overwhelmed by how they looked now.
The colours were so vibrant, but it wasn't just that ... the lanterns just seemed to be floating in the trees and above the ground and there were sound effects too. We could hear the sound of bubbles floating to the surface as though we were breathing under water.
 
It really was magical ... especially when we caught the moon in the background ...
Whilst it was pretty busy and there were lots of people milling about ... the lanterns are displayed in such a way to make it really easy to see everything and to get plenty of really good photos ...
Having loved the under the sea part of the lanterns in the daylight, it was no surprise that this was our absolute favourite part once lit up and we spent a fair while here taking in the atmosphere and lots of photos before moving on ...
The next lanterns we hadn't seen on our first circuit ...
We had one last quick look back at the under the sea montage before leaving it behind for good ...
It was then back to the prehistoric world of the dinosaurs ...
... where it was starting to get a bit darker and everything looked even more colourful and bright ...

... and the moon was still showing its face ...
Then we were back in ancient Egypt and the land of the pyramids ...


... and the giant sphinx ...
Just to let you all know that when we are out and about taking photos Martin tends to use the Canon DSLR and I tend to opt for our old Panasonic Lumix, both take really good photos in different situations and I end up sharing a selection from each on most of my blog posts.

Well, it was in ancient Egypt that the 2nd battery for the Panasonic ran out. Disaster!!! Still lots to see and photos to take, but no more decent zoom as we can never be bothered to carry the extra lens for the Canon.

There was only one thing for it, Martin had to relinquish the Canon 😜

We continued on our way round to the front of the house to be greeted by The Longleat Flyer, which was under a full head of steam ...
... before finding ourselves back in the Arctic where the nocturnal inhabitants were out in full force ...
... and Harry, Bea and Monty were taking tea with the locals ...
Around the side of the house and we were back in The Rain Forest ...


It was proper dark now and just right for our evening jaunt around the solar system ...
 
We came back down to Earth to be greeted by the lanterns and the lotus flowers of India ...
... where we marvelled once again at the beauty of the wildlife ...

We moved on to explore the delights of Japan ...
 
We came out of the formal gardens into the courtyard at the back of the house where the huge Christmas tree was all lit up and ready for its light show, which we didn't actually get to see ...
We were back at the orchids of South America ...
... and that was pretty much it ...
It had been a really long day, it was hard to believe that it was only a few hours ago that we were driving around the safari, but we'd absolutely loved it. We'd walked our socks off and were absolutely shattered but we wouldn't have missed it for the World.

It was time to head back to the car for our drive back to Courtyard Barn, where flaking out on the sofa in front of the TV would definitely be the order of the rest of the day ...
If you've been wondering about whether The Longleat Festival of Light is worth a visit, we would both definitely recommend you go ... it was amazing, we'd never seen anything like it and it by far exceeded our expectations. I'm sure we will be visiting again 😀😀😀

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2 comments:

Thanks for taking time to comment on my blog. I love to hear what people think about what Martin and I have been up to.