Safari near Stirling

Some kind of cattle at the Safari Park
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We were brave on Thursday and went for a drive in the van with the children towards Stirling. Now there were a few things in the Stirling area that I was keen to seen – the William Wallace Monument, Stirling Castle, the Bannockburn Heritage Centre, and the Robert the Bruce Monument. However, we went to the Blair Drummond Safari and Adventure Park.

This place was comparable to any of those drive-through animal parks in Canada, although it was on the property of what had obviously once been an incredible manor. The house overlooking the park was quite something. We drove through the animal reserves first. Rory and Scarlett jumped back-and-forth from one side of the van to the other, looking at the lions, rhinos and other animals.

A falcon buzzed our heads

A lion looks us over and contemplates lunch.
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Once we had finished with that, we parked the car and went into the park. We went to the sea lion show first. It was quite good, but small. There was a solitary sea lion performing the usual array of tricks. It was a first for our kids and I think they really enjoyed, judging from their clapping.

Then we went to the Birds of Prey show. We walked through the bird enclosure first. I was amazed! I had no idea how large eagles are until we saw one up close. We sat and watched the show and again, I think the kids really enjoyed it. Rory snapped pictures as the owl, a hawk and then a falcon buzzed past our heads. The falcon took off from the show at the end, clearly not, what was supposed to happen, but quite amusing.

We took in a few of the other sights, before returning to the house in time to scoop up my mother and take her to some nearby designer outlet malls. My mother and Chantal shopped for several hours, while I wandered around with the children. The only store of real interest to me was the Cadbury chocolate outlet. I hit a few sports stores and found that despite being closer to Edinburgh, the only soccer jerseys that were available were for Celtic and Rangers, both based in Glasgow.