Heavens above, 10 days since I wrote anything! I had no intention of leaving it so long between postings, but events got away from me. Now I am reduced to having no wireless Internet connection and only a very weak and intermittent 3G phone signal, so I may have to post text only until I can get a wireless signal.
On our final Friday in Manchester, we took our grandson to Chester Zoo. The truth is that he was a bit young for the zoo, in fact the soft toys in the shop were more of a success with him than the real live animals! However, I enjoyed it.
We had to wait until the time for his morning nap, so that he would have a little sleep in the car, and we also made him a sandwich for his lunch before we set off, a bit later than intended. Traffic was heavy, so it took about an hour to get there. By the time we arrived, it was clear that almost any other day would have been preferable, because it was absolutely scorching. By the time we had walked from the car park to the entrance, we were glad to cool off in the shop while looking for a hat and possibly sunglasses for our grandson. Unfortunately, there were only pink flowery hats which our daughter-in law absolutely refused, and which anyway our grandson regarded as some kind of new joke and snatched off to throw on the floor. Similarly, he thought the sunglasses were a joke and threw those off too, so we were all condemned to navigating from one patch of shade to the next so he didn't burn too much. Of course, much time was spent with the sun cream, which he also thought was a huge joke; babies are quite hard to catch when they are all slippery with sun cream...
By the time all that jollity was over, it was his lunch time and our son, who had arranged to have no patients that afternoon, was due to arrive, so we broke for lunch. After lunch, we were finally able to go in to the Zoo!
For some reason I didn't photograph the lovely elephants - I think I was too busy lifting our grandson up to show them to him, and he was quite interested in them, especially the baby elephant. I think the big ones were a bit too big for him to appreciate properly. The elephants weren't a bit interested in him, unlike the lions.
We were very fortunate to get such a good view of the lions, it's a long time since I've been so close to lion - not since I was a child, when we regularly used to visit the Nairobi Game Park.
They were certainly very interested in something, probably the tasty little morsel we had wheeled up in the pushchair close beside them, but the tasty little morsel in question wasn't really interested in them, even when exhorted to look at the big pussy cats. He normally likes cats, so he probably didn't believe us, not unreasonably.
He couldn't see the tiger, and I couldn't photograph it, as it was too far away and in the shade. He wasn't too impressed with the ride in the little train either, and neither were we; it was so hot that most of the animals were hiding somewhere in the shade, though you did get a good overall impression of the zoo.
Sadly, the monkeys and apes were all behind glass. Some had outdoor play areas, but were inside because it was cooler. The small monkeys were behind glass, but were playing and swinging about on ropes, so our grandson decided he would like some exercise too, and had to be let out of the pushchair to run up and down. I think if there had been any ropes, he would have tried to swing about like the monkeys, but thankfully, there weren't any.
A lot of kids were running up and down, and the chimpanzees found them as interesting to watch as the people found the chimpanzees.
There was a big section with animatronic dinosaurs which I was glad to see - I missed them in Oxford Street - but they hardly qualify as zoo animals.
Paul and I spent some time flamingo watching while the rest of our party went to see the giraffes and the rhino.
When we saw the rhino and giraffes later, they weren't in a good place for photos, so there aren't any.
As it became later and, if anything hotter, our son and family went home, and we followed about an hour later. The traffic on the motorways was much worse since it was later, so it took us much longer to get home.
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