Longleat House and Gardens

The main purpose of our visit to Longleat in Nov 2016 was to see the Festival of Light for the 50th anniversary of Longleat. Firstly we went through the Longleat safari park which was really interesting. That took almost 3 hours,

After we went around the attractions by the house and gardens.

Firstly we went to the Bat Cave, a man made structure where Egyptian fruit bats are free to fly around.

We also spent some fun minutes in King Arthur's Mirror Maze

Next we went into Jungle Kingdom. There are enclosures for otters, binturong, coatis, porcupines, Red-legged seriema, giant anteaters, Burmese pythons, boa constrictors and maras. And you can walk through an area with meerkats and chipmunks.

binturongs

porcupine

bird striking a pose

fast moving meerkat

red panda

 Then we went into Penguin Island and Stingray Bay. There are Humboldt Penguins -

As soon as we entered the walk through aviary with rainbow lorikeets, some immediately flew onto our heads, arms and shoulders

macaw

The butterfly hot house was devoid of butterflies and then my camera fogged up so I only got a poor shot of this iguana with its tongue sticking out, made worse by the infra red heating light

I also had a go at holding the corn snake and Chilean rose tarantula -

Before it got too dark we had a walk around the hedge maze,

It was starting to get dark and the lights were coming on. Before we had a proper look at them, we went into the house as the ground floor was open for a special Edwardian Christmas party. This was based on the theme of Beatrix Potter's 150th anniversary of her birth. The Great Hall contained costumes from The Royal Ballet Production of Tales of Beatrix Potter. Other rooms were laid out for Christmas dinner, tea, breakfast etc. Staff were dressed in period costumes and interacting with visitors. There were Beatrix Potter books in the library. The whole place was well decorated for Christmas. Unfortunately no photos are allowed.
See more on Beatrix Potter at Longleat.

From the house we went back out into the cold to see the Festival of Lights.

© Liz Price
No reproduction without permission