Birdland, The Model Village and other views, Bourton-on-the-Water

Bourton-on-the-Water

Joy, I have my previous laptop up and running. It's so old it's still running on Windows 7, and you could make breakfast while it boots up! We had to find a mouse as the touchpad no longers works, and half the letters have worn away on the keyboard. I also managed to load my holiday photos up, another lengthy procedure, but I am happy, as despite this laptop being painfully slow and cumbersome, it means I can at least continue with my blogs while I wait for my proper laptop to be repaired and sent back.

So to business. Birdland is just a few mintues walk from the town and lies on the River Windrush. I took my picnic lunch with me and ate it there in the Jurasic Journey, a walk-through with dinosaurs hiding in between the trees. The area of Birdland covers 9 acres. On entering, a map is supplied, though it's easy to follow the main path round. Here there is a line of wire-fenced enclosures with an assortment of birds, but before one reaches them, there is the penguin pool, which I kept returning to. I adore penguins.There were several Emperor Penguins, and a see-through pool where you could watch penguins swimming.

Off this main path were bridges and other paths taking you to other enclosures. There is an African Zone, a lake with flamingos, another extremely muddy enclosure with Emus. That pathway had only recently been re-opened due to the flooding, and I still had to walk through a puddle to get to the other side.

Mud!

Jurrasic Journey

Hatchlings

Lovebirds

Birdland is nicely laid out with plenty to see. There is also a large cafe, toilets and plenty of benches and picnic tables to sit at.

After my visit to Birdland, my next stop was the Model Village. This is laid out like Bourton-on-the-Water with all its buildings, shops, churches, even Birdland and the Motor Museum. I looked for my hotel which is just around the corner from the Motor Museum, but it was just a little too far and didn't feature. The model village has it's own model village of the village! Bourton is known as the Little Venice of the Cotworlds, due to the river and the bridges. This is also shown in the model village. Aside from the model village there was an indoor exhibition of miniature rooms. There was a charge of £1 to visit, and I decided I might as well see them as I was here. Some are quite funny, like the lover hiding under the bed when the husband returns!

Model Village inside a model village!

This is where the bus stops in the real town!

Motor Museum

The Model Village is situated in the main town behind a pub, so easy to visit. Kids will love it, and still being a kid at heart, so did I!

Miniuture Rooms

Finally, I can share some photos from the walk I posted about last time. These include some photos I took at St Lawrence Church, which has an intersting story about the clock. I hope you can see from the photo that there are two clocks. The older one, below, was built and maintained by someone in the village, but the vicar decided he charged too much for maintaining it. So the vicar said he would maintain it himself. Well, he couldn't, and in the end they had to have a new clock.