Emily's Blog

Welcome to my life of randomness!

The Tremendous Trip To Tring Part 3 April 17, 2009

Filed under: My Travels — emeraldgem @ 11:50 am
Tags: , ,

Yesterday, after several days of lovely sunny weather, it decided to rain :(
Me and Lauren got up really early to be ready on time for her boyfriend James to come and pick us up at 9 o’ clock. However we needed have bothered as he came late and we didn’t properly set off until 10 after we’d been to tesco to get some food for lunch and picked up Duncan.
I have never been to a safari park before and only got ideas from Animal Park (yes I do watch it). I did beat my record from tuesday of 244 photos and took 333 photos, however I had to take photos inbetween the rain drops on the car window, which is not easy!
Maybe because of the rain, the animals weren’t doing much, but things started to get more interesting as we drove into the bear enclosure. A couple were play fighting and another began to walk inbetween the cars and got quite close to us. Annoyingly, drivers of other cars would begin to overtake us and then stop, blocking our view of the animal we were watching. And some people even had their windows open in the lion, tiger and bear enclosures!
The Monkey Jungle was fun :) we had two monkeys sit on our car, one of which sat on our roof. It wasn’t until we parked to go to the foot safari, that we realised it had done a poo on the roof. James flicked it off with the aerial he had taken off the car before we went into the park and then started to wave it in front of Lauren’s face, causing complete mayhem. He then threw the tissue he wiped the aerial with at her.

Feed the birds

Feed the birds

After lunch, we went on the foot safari and walked among the wallabies, some of which had babies in their pouches, their feet sticking out :) we also checked out the lemurs, penguins and sealions before going to Rainbow Landing, a big glass building where you can feed lorikeets and lories who would sit on your hand. The keeper told us that they had been quite busy already, so the birds might not be that hungry.  When we got inside, Lauren was determined to get one to sit on her hand and spent 45 minutes trying. At last one did, and Lauren was happy, until it did a poo.

We hung out at James’ for a while and messed around on the Wii. I had a go on the Wii fit, another thing I have never done before, and was shocked that it said I was 10 stone! I’m 9 and a bit. However, my centre of gravity is quite good, it’s only a little bit off to the right.  I was rubbish at the ski jumping game, I kept turning into a massive snowball :D

For tea, we went to Noodle Nation in Aylesbury. The menus were really cool with sudoku and noughts and crosses games on the back and a dragon you can colour in (i’m easily amused). The food was yummy, and the atmosphere was really friendly and relaxed. Also I can use chopsticks! Nearly properly, I don’t have to stab my food with a stick :D

After we hung out at Duncan’s for a bit. He has a barn owl, a harris hawk and a falcon living in his garden and three stark raving mad dogs. I’m ok with dogs sometimes, but if they’re really excitable I get a bit wary. I can read cats’ body language better than dogs. Anyway, we played StarWars and Halo on Duncan’s Xbox, which was a bit hard as the screen was divided among four players on a tiny TV screen.

James drove the long way back to Tring as Lauren wanted to show me Ashridge College, one of the top 3 business management colleges in Europe. It was a stunning building and has acres of land surrounding it.

Was knackered when we finally got back to Lauren’s. As soon as I was in my pyjamas and sleeping bag, I was out.

Today we were going for a walk, but the weather is still grey and miserable, so now we need a plan B.

 

The Tremendous Trip to Tring Part 2 April 15, 2009

Filed under: My Travels — emeraldgem @ 4:27 pm
Tags: , ,

The Zoological Museum

A moose, i wonder if it sings?...

A moose, i wonder if it sings?...

Today I went to Tring’s Natural History Museum with Lauren.
The Natural History Museum (which use to be the Zoological Museum) was created by Walter Rothschild, a man who use to keep zebras, a tame wolf, rheas, kangaroos, kiwis, cassowaries and giant tortoises on the grounds around the Museum and Tring Park. He even had zebras pulling him around on a cart!

Lauren has been to the museum so many times she can go through the entire thing in half a hour. Because of me, we were there for a hour and a half. It was great, I loved it. All these animals you would never get to see, even in a zoo, were there behind glass and you were able to get up close without being scared that they would run away or tear your face off.

Everywhere you looked, there were animals, on your left, right and even above your head!
I had my camera with me and happily taking photos of anything that took my interest and ended up taking 244 photos :S even when my batteries died, I borrowed Lauren’s camera and continued snapping.
Even when they’re dead, the creatures that utterly terrfied me were the spiders. Even behind safely behind glass, I wanted to run away.

ah no! runaway!

ah no! runaway!

I’ve never realised how big some animals are. You don’t really get any idea of size from TV and I was really surprised how huge some animals were. Like seals, I know the Elephant Seal was called so because it’s supposed to be big, I didn’t know it was BIG. And I was slightly concerned how long snakes can grow, one nearly took up the entire length of a cabinet.
I also realised how limited my knowledge of animals was, there were animals I had never even heard of.

Tomorrow I’m off to see live animals at Woburn Safari Park, might struggle to take 244 photos…

 

The Tremendous Trip To Tring Part 1 April 14, 2009

Filed under: My Travels — emeraldgem @ 4:14 pm
Tags: , ,

Ok my first proper post.
Yesterday I took the train on my own for the first time. Honestly I’ve taken the train like four times in my life (shocking isn’t it? :P ) After cleverly packing a week’s worth of clothes in one very small suitcase, I trundled my way to Stoke train station where I waited.
After several moments of confusion (which is very normal for me) and frantic texts (which happens only very occasionally) I finally got onto the 11.50am train to Milton Keynes. It was packed. I had to stand for the entire hour long journey trying to balance a suitcase, rucksack, shoulder bag and laptop bag. I was so relieved to finally sit down in James’ car when he and Lauren came to pick me up.
After a quick tour of the villages Great Gap and Pitstone, we came into Tring, where I was able to dump all my stuff at Lauren’s house before we went round to James’.
We hid chocolate easter eggs around the garden for James’ 22 month old nephew Jacob to find. It was fun to watch him scrabbled through the shrubs in search of three chocolate eggs, a chocolate bunny and tractor. Me and Lauren then discovered just before the hunt, Jacob had watered nearly the entire garden with weed killer!
After we left, we didn’t realise Jacob was following us down the street, until James told us at the bbq.
Amy, Lauren’s older half-sister, and her boyfriend Alex had come up for the day, and after the bbq we had a go at shooting with air pistols. I was rubbish at hitting the target and the fence was riddled with holes, it looked like a bad case of woodworm!
That night I was shattered and went to bed quite early. I did wake up at one point during the night to see Lauren’s foot dangling in front of my face.

Today we went for a picnic in Tring Park with Lauren’s friends Michelle, Jimmy and Jocselyn. Earlier me and Lauren attempted to make cinder toffee. The process consists of heating sugar and golden syrup in a pan until it turns the colour of maple syrup and then adding bicarbonate of soda and whisking like crazy. Then you pour it onto a well greased piece of tin foil. The first attempt was rubbish, the second was a bit better.
We had a wander around Tring, including the Memorial Garden which has some really cool coy carp in it and a shy frog.
Tomorrow I’m off to the Zoological Museum in Tring which is full of stuffed animals. Or else they’re very well trained and behaved animals…

 

 
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.