Tattoos and Travel...: Weekend away during the week

August 2013

Mum decided she wanted to move the caravan from Ilfracombe to Tewkesbury and asked if I wanted to come with her and spend a bit of time in Ilfracombe as I’d only been down once before. I said yes and it turned into a bit of a girl’s weekend away which was nice.

The campsite had a farm-zoo type thing on site which to be honest impressed me a little. I mean the thing itself wasn’t anything incredible, it was just a barn that had been converted into various pens and cages but it was a lot better than I expected and there was quite a lot of variety. There was a cat and her kittens, quail, chipmunks, mice, rats, ferrets (used for racing), sheep, puppies, calves, a Shetland pony and its foal, goats, chickens of various breeds and two absolutely humungous pot belly pigs. I’m always quite critical when at any animal collection but I must say, for being in an old barn, on a campsite, in the middle of nowhere, they all appeared well looked after. The only animals I took issue with were the calves as they were clearly underweight with prominent hip bones. As the public was able to buy bottles of milk to feed them, the sheep and the goats however I wasn’t sure whether it was because they had some condition which prevented them from putting on weight quickly or whether they were relying too much on the public buying milk to feed them and not feeding them enough in general. I mean, I’m assuming a local farm gave them the calves either because they weren’t putting on weight normally but whether it was just to get rid of them (as there would be little meat value) or whether so they could be fed up and returned to the herd I don’t know but it wasn’t nice seeing them in a poor condition. Of course that just meant I needed to buy more milk to feed them up with!

Mum feeding the sheep

Me feeding the sheep

Me bottle feeding a baby moo-cow

Mum bottle feeding a baby-moo cow

Me feeding the Shetland pony and her foal

Me bottle feeding the goats

Mum feeding the goats

The next day mum asked me what I wanted to do and after some discussion we decided to make the trip to Exmoor zoo. Neither of us had ever been there so we thought we’d see what it was like. Overall it was a bit rundown in places but generally quite good. They seemed to have quite a good range of animals and it was quite funny how they’d played on the Exmoor beast and featured panthers complete with the Exmoor beast story.

Ring-Tailed Lemur

Pelican

Tapir

Tayra

African Penguins

Bad photo of a Bintarong

Caracal

Cougar

Meerkat

Peacock

Panther

Manned Wolf

Asian Fishing Cat

Water Monitors

Tortoise

Tree Porcupine

Me and my momma at the zoo

Before we left we went to a talk, I forget what the actual name was but it consisted of several different animals. Whilst it was directed at the general public and didn't really tell me anything I didn't know, it was nice to get up close to some of the animals.