Last weekend we headed south early on Friday morning for Edgebaston Cricket Club.  It was the third day of a four day game between Yorkshire and Warwickshire. There were a few breaks for rain but after lunch the weather held and Yorkshire managed to storm ahead to a boring draw despite declaring with 600 runs the night before.  We left about an hour early to head further south to Tewkesbury.  We booked into the Weatherlodge there, where Sal is deputy manager.  Jenny and Stuart, and Lorna joined us and on the Saturday we went in Stu’s very nice BMW to the Badminton Horse Trials.  It must be nearly 10 years since we last went and it was still just as good.  It’s a really good day out and you don’t have to be particularly horsey to enjoy it.  Like many live events you don’t see as much on the ground but get a much better feel for the atmosphere and excitement.  We had Sky+’d it (is that a verb?) so watched the highlights when we got back – well done Ollie Townend.

On Sunday we headed even further south to Longleat.  It’s somewhere I’ve always wanted to go and wasn’t disappointed.  I’ll upload most of the photos onto Flickr and facebook but a couple are worth posting on here.

The rhino were very impressive.

Rhino

Once you get into the big cat enclosures, you  have to keep your windows up.  Stephen was trying to get a photo of the lions and a fly was sitting on the glass – so he tapped it to make it move.  This co-incided with the large male lion getting up and walking straight towards us!

Lion

Despite the safety of the car – I for one was pretty worried.  However, what we hadn’t realised was that there was another juicy piece of meat just where we were parked and he just lay down, tucked in and totally ignored us.  It did mean though that Stephen got a fabulous photo.

lion eating

It was a brilliant day and a fantastic weekend.  It was great to see the girls and boyfriends.