Elvaston Castle

Given that the weather was looking good I took a trip to Elvaston Castle to have a look around. Elvaston Castle is just outside of Derby, in the country, and is a Gothic style Manor house built by James Watt. The castle is surrounded by grade II listed gardens, St Bartholomew's Parish Church and woodland.

A view of Elvaston castle from across the lake.

A pathway towards a secret garden, or so I assumed.

A nicely carved wooden chair, reminded me of Goldilocks for some reason..

The bell tower of St Bartholomew's Parish Church.

A view of Elvaston Castle from the garden, as the sun caught the building in front of a stormy sky.

Ndutu - Nirvana?

After a few fantastic days in the Serengeti I was a little sad to leave, especially after the amusing antics of Poser Leopard. However my group had promised me that the next stop on our trip; this amazing place called Ndutu, was simply nirvana. I was happily imagining a place where the sun was always shining, the migration was passing through and leopard cubs were playing with cheetah cubs. My group had neglected to mention that we would be catching the start of the rainy season and the chance of thunderstorms was reasonably high.

Sheets of rain moving across the plains in Ndutu.

 A tawny eagle taking off in the sunshine against the dark backdrop of storm clouds

The storm clouds being photographed by my Dad who was enjoying the challenge of the ever changing
weather.

A surprise leopard sighting as leopards usually keep to themselves in Ndutu.
This one was chased up a tree by a large female lion, but still looked great against
the storm clouds.

Judging by the look on this little guy's face I'm not sure he enjoyed the rain much!

I would still have to agree that my week in Ndutu was an amazing experience and the 4 or 5 rain storms that we had only added to the experience. My previous blog post Cheetahs in the rain features more examples of the photographs to be had if one braves the weather.