Rhinos, tigers, beer and beach!

Jackie having her hand sucked at WM Safari Park

We cleaned and tidied and said a fond and sad farewell to Nellie and Mr. Pickles. Back to mum for a couple of nights and then to Abi for lunch on Friday. Lovely to see her and Sooty. Then on to Helen and Ian for our staycation! We started with a pub walk with Monty dog before a curry takeaway on Friday (well we had had a big lunch already). Saturday was meant to be a big walk, but with not wanting to stress Brian’s knee too much at the beginning of the week, it shrunk to just a couple of hours. Monty was happy though, and it wasn’t the only one for the day, a table had been booked for an hour at the Birmingham Brew Company. How weird having to book a slot to go for a pint?

These giraffes certainly know where the food is

We were allowed to feed all sorts. Glad he didn't put his head through the window!

Sunday, out with the dog again, before a quick lunch followed by meeting up in Cannon Hill Park for conservation. 17 of us litter picked, pruned sycamore trees from by the path and hacked back brambles. A solid two hours work showed much improvement justifying the roast lamb dinner.

Rhinos - lots of them - and all with horns. After our trip to South Africa earlier in the year and the poaching of Rhino horns there, it was a pleasure to see them and the park rangers pretty relaxed and not paranoid about possible poaching

Look at this handsome chap enjoying his ribs!

Monday was the start of the staycation proper, Monty was dropped off at his dog hotel and we continued on to the West Midlands Safari Park. We all enjoyed it, though there were tears from Helen early on as she was almost mugged by a camel. We weren’t meant to feed them but try telling them that! Fortunately they were tears of laughter. Ian looked slightly nervous as a rhino approached the rear of the car, didn’t seem to be any damage, but there was grass and rhino slobber on the back of the car. A claim to fame that not everyone can share! The giraffes we were allowed to feed, and we did, they were lovely, much less slobbery than some of the other things. It rained briefly as we were sitting waiting for the sea lion show to start, but that wasn’t for long. We almost missed going into the parakeet house which Ian would probably have been quite pleased about and Brian would have been devastated about. Ian doesn’t like birds, but with the little pot of nectar in his hand they liked him! As ever with this sort of thing a picture will speak 1000 words, just hope they are not all put on, they were on a slide show while we were eating home made pizza for tea, they only went through twice in the whole duration of dinner!

Baby elephant wouldn't leave mummy elephant alone, even though she was getting a bit fed up with it

This rhino was OK until he got too close....

Tuesday was forecast to be the best weather day, so that was the beach day. Off to Colwyn Bay and then on to Llandudno. We all went out wearing shorts, paddled, lay on the beach, picnic’d walked along the pier and around the Alice in Wonderland thing in the park. Ate ice cream, drank beer and generally had a good seaside day, stopping for dinner on the way home, it was a full day out.

Today is a little housekeeping, shopping, blogging making bread rolls for a bbq tomorrow, the boys have been into the park to stake a tree that was unearthed while hacking back in a meadow on Sunday. A quick lunch will be followed by a walk to the train station, train to Erdington and walk back under Spaghetti Junction, through Birmingham to see what has changed before meeting up with Manu and Crystal in China Town for yummy Chinese tea.

Taking a close interest in Ian's car - a bit too close for comfort!

And then he/she headed towards our open window. Time to close it! I'm sure it said somewhere that we could feed them, but somehow it didn't seem appropriate! Perhaps we imagined it - in any case we weren't going to try

Rhino smeg on the car - not many people can claim that

Quite a cute photo of a giraffe leaning down and about to stick his head through the open window

Hippos! We like hippos (from a distance). This one seemed quite disappointed as he'd got out of the water to go indoors and found it locked, he had to go back into the water. Watch out little duck!

These red bellied lemurs came bowling down the path when we arrived and immediately jumped on us. How cute we thought - no, for two reasons, 1 is that they had very dirty paws, the other was that they smelled horrible - really horrible!

The Lorikeets liked Brian and particularly Ian (who doesn't like birds!) 

A day at the seaside. Guess where we are!

Beach...

...Ice cream...

A walk on the pier at Llandudno (the hill behind is the Little Orme and Colwyn Bay to the right)

A little walk on the Great Orme to the Victorian Garden (that's Llandudno pier behind)

A little story time from Helen in the bookworm corner

Sitting at the Mad Hatters Tea Party table

On the Alice in Wonderland Trail. Now that's a proper day at the seaside!