A day trip to Longleat, Wiltshire

Sunday May 20, 2012

 

I took a bus tour from Plymouth to Longleat. I'd wanted to go there for a long time, not for the animal park or other attractions but mainly for the maze. The trip would take most of the day.

 

On the way there we passed through a wonderful little place about 3/4 of a hour's drive from Plymouth. I couldn't believe it wasn't on the tourist trail... at least I'd never heard of it. I wanted to go there and walk around and imagined doing so many times, even making notes on paths around the charming town. I pictured a beautiful sunny morning in this idyllic place, which, I learned later, was called Ashburton.

 

I'm not a big fan of zoos, but if animals have to be in one, there are much worse places than Longleat. I noticed that the animals didn't appear to be stressed as I've seen in some more enclosed zoos. As you can see, there was a fair amount of open space on this property. According to info on the internet this was the first drive-though safari park outside Africa, opened in 1966,



 

 

 

 

 

Then, there is a boat tour you can take.

 

 

The main event seemed to be this fellow.

Winnipeg - Bus tour continues

Thursday May 28, 2009

Continuing the tour we were taken down part of Wellington Street to see the expensive homes. It looked a bit like our Uplands. Moving buses are not are not ideal for taking photos but the pictures above give an idea of the area. Even the less expensive neighbourhoods had attractive treed boulevards.

We saw an area of town where movies are filmed because the old buildings can be made to look like other cities as they were years ago. We zipped around the corner of Portage and Main, famous for its extremely cold wind. I was surprised, shocked really, that you can no longer stand on the corner because the passageway is all underground now. Imagine that - the most well-known street corner in the country is inaccessible to tourists. I was also surprised that the Eaton's store building no longer exists, which was where my Mom worked before she and Dad moved to Victoria after the great flood of 1950.

An interesting bridge

We were taken to the French neighbourhood of St. Boniface and the Catholic Church there. St. Boniface is not a separate town but we heard about how the residents fought to keep their post office by making a point of addressing mail to St. Boniface rather than Winnipeg. And they were striving to get shop and restaurant owners, even if they were Italian or Korean, to make building fronts to look French.

Louis Riel's tombstone at the St. Boniface Cemetery

St. Boniface Cathedral

The interior of the building had burned so they built a new modern one inside the remaining walls.

Different views of the front wall of the original building. I like the sort of Santa Fe, southwest look of it.

Side view.

Detail.

A model of what it used to look like.

An unusual interior.

There were many scenes in the windows. Apparently one appears to be missing but it shows up on a wall when the sun shines through at a certain angle.

Our tour guide was French-Canadian with a family going back several generations in this country, so she's more Canadian than I am. But inside the church she went on and on and on about the French for so long that people became bored and started wandering off. To hear her talk, Winnipeg is all about the French and I thought it was too bad that some foreigners may have gone away with that impression. I would have if I didn't know better. For fun, I looked up Winnipeg's ethic origins on the internet and found that the French ranked 6th. English, Scottish and German are the top three.

It was a little disappointing that we didn't get to see the huge rail yard in Winnipeg either from the train or on this tour.

Winnipeg - A bus tour

Thursday, May 28, 2009

I think Manitoba gets a bit of a bad rap. You don't often hear of it being a tourist destination, yet it has one of the most (if not the most) beautiful beaches in Canada. It may be a prairie province in the middle of the country, but parts of it look more like BC to me rather than Alberta or Saskatchewan. Also, most of my family was from there so I'm partial to it. Still, when we decided to take a bus tour during the lengthy stop in Winnipeg and Glenn asked, "What is there to see?" I couldn't answer. The only thing that came to mind was Fort Garry but we wouldn't be going there.

No, this isn't Glenn's train layout, but it looks like it could be if this scene by the train station was shrunk to miniature size.

As our bus pulled out of The Forks, the area we'd seen before on our way east, the French-Canadian tour guide told us about its history. Evidence was found of bison hunting thousands of years ago. Later it became an important site in the fur trade, and then for the railway. When the government began promoting the 'Gateway to the Canadian West', they built immigration sheds here for a thousand people.

Winnipeg was hit with more floods this past winter and you could see that the river was still quite high. Part of a paved walkway disappeared under water.

The tour guide talked about the city being known for its friendly people. Could be - my aunt in Victoria had many lifelong, childhood friends from Winnipeg.

Our first stop would be the Manitoba Legislative Building.

There are a lot of elm trees in Winnipeg so it would be devastating if they all got killed off by Dutch Elm disease, a fungus spread by bark beetles. To combat this, the city bands the tree trunks from fall to spring.

Heading into town it looks like they're getting ready to plant their flower beds.

Quebec - Waterfalls & island tour

Saturday, May 16, 2009

Tour - part 1

The 4½ hour bus tour costs $48.70 each. The company picks you up at or near your hotel - in our case just next door in front of the Museum of Civilization.

My sister took this tour in December.

Soon after we got going, the driver talked about the Laurentian Mountains which turn into the Appalachians in the States. Maybe it was the weather, maybe the actual mountains are farther away, but I looked across the river and all I could see were some low rolling hills.

We saw flocks of snow geese on the drive out of town, but the trouble with bus tours is that you can't just stop and take pictures when you want. I missed so many photos opportunities.

A map showing the main sights of this tour. None of these are far away - probably only about a 15-20 minute drive from downtown Quebec City.
The yellow circle shows our starting point.
* Pink star - the falls
* Yellow star - the island
* Green star - the church

From this map you can really see how it makes sense that the name for Quebec meant 'where the river narrows.'

Our bus, driven by a chatty fellow from Switzerland. I don't think I could drive and talk for 4+ hours non-stop.

First stop, Montmorency Falls, the main thing I wanted to see. Nearby we zipped by another waterfall which I wasn't able to photograph. Montmorency Falls are one and a half times the height of Niagara Falls.

We all got out of the bus and herded through a building where you can catch a gondola up to the falls.

We barely had time to walk along the walkway to take photos, and grab a couple of postcards and maple cookies in the gift shop when we were off already. Wait a minute - we paid all that money to see the falls and that's it?! No. We would return, but we didn't know that yet.

Next we cross a bridge to Île d'Orléans, a small, rural island known as the 'garden of Quebec.' From the island you can look back and see the falls.

We were told that strawberries, apples and potatoes are grown here, but we are going to visit a chocolate factory. In 1970 the government declared this island a historic district in order to stop the spread of development.

The driver stopped to make a joke with this fellow carrying the chairs.

Chocolaterie de l'Ile d'Orleans. You won't believe this, but when we got to the chocolate shop I didn't care about it. I just wanted to get outside and see the sights.

We had enough time to wander down the road. The benches face the river. A diagram at this spot describes the Laurentian Mountains as being 'massive.'

A young Italian couple on the tour took the opportunity to sit on one of these benches and eat a big sandwich. Every time we stopped, they were eating. I don't know how they stayed so slim.

Some of the houses in the area. You can just imagine how jolly it must be around here on a sunny summer's day.