I've had Visitors!

Hence my silence for the last few days. My young man came up from the Big Smoke for a week, and in the middle of that my sister, her husband and my little nephew James arrived for a few days in their camper van ("Are they hippies?" I was asked at work when they heard about the camper van - my sister is just about a polar opposite of a hippy.)
Because of the camper van, though, I could take them all to see things outside my usual range.
On Monday, we did some light shopping around Hay, finishing up at Kilvert's for lunch. They seemed to be having a bit of trouble with the kitchens, as the wait for food was quite long, and at one point the chef sent two meals out that nobody had ordered.
However, we then set off for Kington's Small Breeds Farm and Owl Centre. It's the sort of thing you kind of need the excuse of entertaining a five year old to visit, though all the adults were fascinated too. We never knew there were so many different sorts of owl! The collection here is the biggest in Europe - burrowing owls, fish eating owls, spectacled owls that look like penguins, owls from Africa and the South American jungles, and the Arctic, and more.
Then we went into the field, where there were pygmy goats and miniature donkeys and Kune Kune pigs and Golden Guernsey goats, and fluffy legged chickens, and geese with a shoe fixation - they followed people around pecking gently at their toes! In the corner of the field were a couple of pavilions housing fancy pheasants and red squirrels - the squirrels could move between the cages in wire tubes.
Further down were the buildings with the small animals - chipmunks and chinchillas and guinea pigs and rabbits - and tortoises. There were ducks and geese in little ponds, and finally three reindeer and three llamas! I'd like to say that I was interested in the llamas because their wool can be hand spun, but actually I just enjoyed stroking them. And there were plenty of places to wash your hands afterwards.
There's a little cafe as well, and I think it was well worth the £7.50 for adults and £4.50 for children.
They have a website at http://www.owlcentre.com