4 May 2010 (Tuesday) - Abbottsbury

An hour was spent doing crosswords (it’s a holiday thing) before scoffing brekky and setting off to Abbottsbury – a nearby village with several attractions. They had a deal where we if we bought tickets for two of the things, we’d get the third one free. And we didn’t have to do them all on the same day. So today we went to the Swannery. We started off by playing around in the maze. There were six questions on posts at various places in the maze, and I reported back the answers. I don’t know if we won anything, but hope springs eternal.


And then to the swans. There were hundreds of them. Literally. I think we’d picked the right time to go. At any other time of year they swans would probably be doing what swans do – swimming about on the ponds. But today was part of egg-season, and the swans were all on their nests. About a hundred nests, and all built wherever the swans wanted to build them. Several being on the footpaths. Every nest had an upturned dustbin lid by it, into which the staff would pour food and water on a daily basis. Those swans were spoiled.

We made a point of going to feeding time, where one of the keepers gave a really good talk, and then we wandered back the long way to the café. I had the soup, which was served by a rather “special” looking chef (bless). I was tempted to have a bottle of the local beer with my soup, but at four pounds per bottle I thought better of that idea.


In the afternoon we went to the second Abbotsbury attraction – the kiddies zoo. This zoo was particularly good, with pigs, goats, budgerigars, rabbits, lambs and guinea pigs all available to be mauled by the children. I can only imagine this place must have a very high attrition rate, and must have regular deliveries of new livestock judging by the way some of the animals were being mauled. But Emily seemed to enjoy poking the rabbit in the eye, and I liked feeding the goats.


I think I caught the sun today, and on arrival back at the caravan I had a few minutes kip before tea. And with littlun asleep we settled down to watch “Beautiful Mind” – a really good film about a genius who was barking mad.


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