Port Lympne

Yesterday was Mr Poachie's birthday so to spoil my little Virgo I took him to Port Lympne to see the animals.

Virgo's spirit animal is a bear so I felt an animal themed birthday was the right thing to do (despite the park not having any bears). Mr Poachie thinks anything to do with star signs and horoscopes is BS but I quite like all things celestial and magic. Plus it is fun to wind him up.

We got up and had eggs royale for breakfast then headed off nice and early to make the most of the day. We had booked tickets in advance which saved us a bit of money and guaranteed our entrance for the day. When we arrived we got a couple of campachoochoo's and skipped off to see the lions...

I didn't bother trying to take photo's of the animals as they never come out well. 

Never work with children and animals!

It was really quiet on our visit which was lovely, I have been before a few years ago and pre covid this would have been packed with school kids etc so it was fun to walk around and have it near enough to ourselves.

Recently it feels like we have had a lot of time off and it's been a good work/life balance. When lockdown first hit we worked solidly for months and then couldn't go out and weekends. Despite the threat of another potential form of lockdown coming, I am glad we have been able to do as much as we have this summer and now that the seasons have changed I feel there is less I would be doing at the weekends anyway other than long autumnal walks and home cooking.

Time to get cosy!

As much as I think it is interesting to be able to see these kind of wild animals, I don't 100% approve of places like this though, I really don't think animals should be in enclosures, despite the size here. It isn't natural for them and you could see the big cats were pacing the perimeter they must be desperate to get out.

If you have seen the film 'Black fish' you will never want to visit Seaworld!

I love gorillas, they are magnificent. It was very surreal seeing them in real life as you get so used to seeing them on the telly with David Attenborough on a Sunday night.

We also loved seeing the smaller primates, they were very cute and seemed to be having a lot of fun swinging about.

We did a lot of walking and it was really hot! So we felt we should stop and have a drink to celebrate.

The only thing that was closed off due to covid was the safari experience but we didn't feel that we had missed out. We saw rhino's, tapirs, tigers, lions, small cats, apes and lots of other things. Some enclosures you couldn't see much but I suppose that is part of it, its like being in the wild.

The decor inside the main building was cool. I now really want to visit the Giraffe manor hotel in Kenya.

After the park we had a late afternoon lunch and then headed home for some birthday cake.

Happy birthday Mr Poachie!