I love anything with animals, especially farms. A short drive from Dan's hometown is a fantastic place called Bucklebury Farm Park. For those who do Royal watching, yes, the farm is located in the same village as Kate Middleton's hometown. Dan pointed this out to me, as we were driving through the beautiful village of Bucklebury, whose cluster of businesses were a "blink and you'll miss it" situation.
We pulled up to the farm and discovered that we were the only visitors, with the exception of staff, the huge, dirt parking lot was completely empty. Dan has visited before and said that it's normally packed. We came on a bitterly cold Tuesday morning, when most of the local kids were in school. Except for the miserable weather, this is the way to do it!
We bought the family admission (two adults, two kids) for thirty pounds and they gave us a large bag of feed for the animals. The animals game galloping across the fields when they saw us, all eager for a bit of the feed.
A couple of the goats were very aggressive in their attempts to get us to give them food. They banged their hooves on a nearby rabbit hutch. Those poor rabbits have bad neighbors!
We were allowed to go into the pen with the rabbits and pygmy goats.
The pigs recently had babies.
They had boars in both a pen and in a field. In the pen, we watched as they were given a treat of the day-old cafe pastries. In the field, they were rooting and rolling around in the deep mud, having a great time.
The barn also had cows and donkeys. The staff at Bucklebury Farm Park were fantastic, giving us lots of information and ways to interact with the animals. Dan's kids were a bit shy, but had they wanted to, they could have sat in a tractor and given pastries to the boars.
In addition to all of the animals, Bucklebury Farm Park has an extensive play area. We were too busy playing and having fun to bother with taking a ton of pictures.
The best part was an enormous trampoline. We were all out of breath and in giggles from playing on it. It was serious exercise too! Dan and I need to look for a trampoline park in Los Angeles.
In addition to the enormous outdoor play area, they have two indoor slides, which was perfect for the cold day. They were the type of slides that you see at carnivals, where you need a burlap sack to sit on. I think that the kids could have spent all day on the slides. It's located adjacent to the cafe, so it kept the adults happy too!
We spent a couple of hours at Bucklebury Farm Park. I think that if the weather had been warmer, we could have easily spent half a day. The kids loved the play area.
On our way out, we heard a cluck and saw our final animal...Chickens!!! A farm just isn't complete without the chickens.
Bucklebury Farm Park is a gem of a local attraction and a must-do for animal lovers! Check out their official website for more information.