Longleat

[Orlando Soon]

We went there on Friday, had a lovely day, it was quite busy. Decided not to go through monkey enclosure as it was bumper to bumper giving the money’s lots of chances to hop onto cars.
Lots to do and see, used Tesco vouchers, you have to book in advance not just turn up.
Loved everything, social distancing markers in place, people cleaning toilets regularly, and it was a very sunny day so that helped.

[Princess Alison]

Thank you for all your replies and stories. We are now home and can report that we absolutely loved longleat. What a wonderful park! I've wanted to go for about 10 years (!) but we've never been travelling in that direction from kent and so I've had to patiently wait!

Well it was well worth it and we had an amazing time. We got there before opening and were alone in the safari drive through for the majority of the time!

The monkeys were brilliant - as the first 'toy' of the day, we were spotted immediately and they raced over to jump on the car.

Here's some photos:

Honestly as soon as they jumped aboard, you could see them searching for anything loose on the car! Luckily we have a lot of old leaves stuck down the windscreen, so they happily cleared those and ate them!

The tiger enclosure was a bit fraught, as we stopped to watch one and it turned to the car!

I don't think I can post the video but it walked right up to us before the rangers x 2 surrounded us to scare it away!

We also got up close to the lions with a lioness crossing in front of us. Absolutely amazing.

The two prides were just lazing in the sun.

On arriving back at the car park, we inspected the car - to find that the monkeys had attempted to dismantle the rubber seal on the roof - one piece missing and the rest pulled right up! We had wondered why people were pointing at our car! It seems to have pushed back into place though 😃


We also saw the koalas and wombats, which again were great.

All in all a thoroughly enjoyable day and very well organised by longleat.

Mission accomplished!

[MillyMoo]

Glad you had a fab day, you're very brave going through the monkeys!
We have passes and go quite a bit but rarely do the safari. The only negative thing about longleat is that once you enter the African section you cant get back out unless you go through the safari, it means that because we don't want to we miss seeing the giraffes etc

[shelly]

Glad you enjoyed it! It a brilliant place to work ☺️

[Apricota]

We are going next Saturday, really looking forward to it

[Disneyfreaks]

Originally Posted by Princess Alison

Should we drive through the monkey enclosure? Is it really that risky?

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We’ve driven thru several times & been very lucky every time with no damage but we’ve seen cars in a real state, bits hanging off, aerials bent etc ! It really does happen, only you can decide if you want to risk it !

It is funny seeing it happen, but not so much If it happens to you !

[shelly]

To be fair to the monkeys... other animals do damage to the cars too, just not as often!

[theCMG]

we went through when I was a kid, dad driving his prized new burgundy Rover Princess (Princesses should have sued to get the name changed)

Of course a monkey lays a massive poo on the sunroof. I learn a few new words as Dad's fuming away. He speeds up and slows down to get rid of the beast. This works, the monkey hops off and the cable has rolled forward down the windscreen and is now resting on top of the windscreen wiper...

Choose your own adventure time, what to do next? He gambles and switches on the wiper to try and flick it off the windscreen. Fails! Massive rainbow shaped crap smear on the windscreen. I still chuckle when I think about it now

[wombat girl]

Originally Posted by Princess Alison

Thank you for all your replies and stories. We are now home and can report that we absolutely loved longleat. What a wonderful park! I've wanted to go for about 10 years (!) but we've never been travelling in that direction from kent and so I've had to patiently wait!

Well it was well worth it and we had an amazing time. We got there before opening and were alone in the safari drive through for the majority of the time!

The monkeys were brilliant - as the first 'toy' of the day, we were spotted immediately and they raced over to jump on the car.

Here's some photos:

Honestly as soon as they jumped aboard, you could see them searching for anything loose on the car! Luckily we have a lot of old leaves stuck down the windscreen, so they happily cleared those and ate them!

The tiger enclosure was a bit fraught, as we stopped to watch one and it turned to the car!

I don't think I can post the video but it walked right up to us before the rangers x 2 surrounded us to scare it away!

We also got up close to the lions with a lioness crossing in front of us. Absolutely amazing.

The two prides were just lazing in the sun.

On arriving back at the car park, we inspected the car - to find that the monkeys had attempted to dismantle the rubber seal on the roof - one piece missing and the rest pulled right up! We had wondered why people were pointing at our car! It seems to have pushed back into place though 😃


We also saw the koalas and wombats, which again were great.

All in all a thoroughly enjoyable day and very well organised by longleat.

Mission accomplished!

See more...

Love the wombat picture - its where I get my name from(sort of)

The one at Longleat is a southern nosed wombat where as I take my name from the common wombat as they are cuter.

Glad you had a lovely day.

[Princess Alison]

Originally Posted by wombat girl

Love the wombat picture - its where I get my name from(sort of)

The one at Longleat is a southern nosed wombat where as I take my name from the common wombat as they are cuter.

Glad you had a lovely day.

See more...

Haha they are cute aren't they - the board said 'hairy nosed wombat', which I remember as we all laughed at that!

The koala creek area was really well done