Golden Day

A golden day – D and I went out for a drive as it was such a beautiful day .Spring has truly arrived on our island – glorious sunshine, blue skies a soft freshness in the air; blossom everywhere I turned – the golden trumpets of the daffodils crowning the hedges, golden gorse, covering the slope of the hillside and a carpet of green and gold on the roadside –the starbright faces of the celandine lifted to the sun shining like newly polished coins as we pass by.

We stopped in Peel as usual – D wanted to show me another piece of metalwork he has created, so we walked through the town to the harbour so he could show me. He really is an artist in his own way – and I never knew what a good craftsman he was until we moved over here. Examples of his skill in metalwork is now scattered over the island – and I love that he is proud enough of his work to want to show me each time another item is fitted.
I get a small bubble of pride inside each time I see yet another one of his designs – from massive mansion gates to small wall decoration like this. We walked round the castle before heading back to the car to carry on.
We took our usual route, but because of roadworks it was a bit difficult to get to the coast road but we managed it in the end, fabulous coastal views as we drove along. Finally heading on to Ballaugh where we stopped at the Curraghs Wild Life Park. The Curraghs is a wetland area with lots of different animal habitats representing various marshy and wetland areas around the world, with the appropriate wild life, so there are capybara, rheas, flamingos, Humboldt penguins,scarlet ibis, red pandas, tamarins, lemurs - so many I can't remember them all! A long time since we have been round so we decided to go in and have a couple of hours here and have our lunch in the café. So glad we stopped off – a perfect day for watching the wild life – so few leaves as yet that it was easy to see the creatures and we have some great photos – especially of the red pandas, the otters and the enormous variety of bird life; - all very busy showing off and pairing up for the season!!
Quite a lot of new arrivals since our last visit, and new enclosures. Had a really lovely time.