December 2017 — yorkshirehayley.com

The Gingerbread House from Hansel and Gretel was my favourite in the Festival of Light

One of the great things about being a tour manager is you get to do a lot more Christmas trips than the average person, Christmas tours to snowy destinations, European Christmas markets, English stately homes with their themed Christmas decorations and Christmas lights.

Longleat combined Christmas lights and decorated English stately homes, and as an added bonus, you get to go around a safari park too.

Little Red Riding Hood is stalked by the wolf

Longleat first started drawing the crowds when they bought lions as a way of attracting visitors and since then they have expanded. These days there are a lot more animals and a multitude of other attractions to set this place apart from other English stately homes.

And throughout December and the beginning of January, Longleat have a Festival of Lights for Christmas.

We came to Longleat on a weekend when there was heavy snowfall through the Midlands. Fortunately we did manage to get to Longleat, unfortunately because of the cold weather, the animals weren’t exactly the most active I’ve ever seen them. If they were to be seen at all.

When we drove around the safari park, the deer, zebra and Bactrian camels seemed happy enough in the cold weather. The recently rescued elephant was in her house and the rhinos were also indoors. We drove through the monkey enclosure and the monkeys are normally jumping all over the vehicles being both playful and destructive. But in the cold weather, the monkeys also preferred the shelter of their tree hideaways, just a couple of hardy souls were sitting outside, but they were conserving their energy and barely moved a muscle, they certainly weren’t doing any running and jumping. Even the Canadian timber wolves who you would think would be used to cold winters, were mostly sheltering inside and only one or two were visible, laying under the trees.

Gurt Wurm - the Somerset Dragon - there isn't one of these in the Safari Park! — Gurt Wurm – the Somerset Dragon – there isn’t one of these in the Safari Park!

The big cats did make up for the inactivity of the other animals though, the lions were all out in the open, grouped in their prides in the two enclosures, one of the cheetahs was sitting proudly on a tree stump as if posing for photos, but the tigers were the stars of the show, stalking around the enclosure as if they were hunting for prey, one of them walked right in front of our bus. Very clever. If it was going to get a meal, it seemed to make sense to target the vehicle with the greatest number of people in it!

The Little Mermaid looks out to the lake

After the safari we had several hours to look around the rest of the Longleat estate. The train that runs along the lake shore had turned into a Santa train for Christmas so I didn’t ride the train on this occasion, however, the boat was sailing as normal. The hippo was a long way in the distance, but at least you could catch a glimpse, unlike the gorillas who were nowhere to be seen. Nico, the old gorilla who lives on his own island in the middle of the lake, in a house with central heating and a telly, was not receiving visitors today. In warmer weather he’ll sit outside, but when we went past his island he was in his house, probably lounging in his armchair in his dressing gown, drinking Cabernet Sauvignon and watching a Christmas film on telly with the radiator on full blast. Which is exactly what any sensible person would have been doing on a day like this.

Boat from the Little Mermaid lit up in the lake

The other gorillas were also in their house, they’d already been fed so there was no incentive for them to venture out into the cold again. But the sealions could always be relied upon to provide the entertainment on what would have otherwise been a very dull boat ride on the lake. They were swimming alongside the boat for the entire trip. All of the sealions are females apart from Buster, an enormous male who is probably the noisiest of the sealions too. The children on the boat could purchase fish to feed to the sealions who greedily waited for the food to be thrown overboard.

Sleeping Beauty's Castle is made of silk, like every other structure in the Festival of Light — Sleeping Beauty’s Castle is made of silk, like every other structure in the Festival of Light

I hadn’t been in Longleat House for a few years, but I went inside on this occasion to see it all decorated for Christmas. They had done a beautiful job of decorating the house, a large Christmas tree in each room, the dining room table set in readiness for a festive meal and all staff dressed in period costume, happy to tell visitors about Victorian Christmas customs. Sadly no photographs were permitted inside the house, so I can’t show you what the decorations were like.

Cinderella's glass slipper and her pumpkin coach in the distance — Cinderella’s glass slipper and her pumpkin coach in the distance

The main reason for coming to Longleat was to see the Christmas lights. Every year Longleat have a Festival of Lights where they decorate the grounds around Longleat House in a particular theme. The theme this year was fairytales. The decorations were made of silk and had lights inside them. The lights were due to be switched on at 4 o’clock. The Fairytale Festival of Lights was one of the best outdoor Christmas light displays I have ever seen. It was worth coming to Longleat to see these alone. My particular favourite was the gingerbread house from Hansel and Gretel, but there were so many other fairytales represented from classics like Cinderella and the Sleeping Beauty to more unusual ones like the Firebird, a Russian fairytale and the local Gurt Wurm, a legendary dragon originating in South West England. There was also an illuminated boat on the lake as part of the Little Mermaid fairytale and an archway leading into the Snow Kingdom from the Snow Queen, which was appropriate for this time of year and the animals from the Snow Queen were all quite happy to be out in the cold, snowy, winter weather. A path weaved its way amongst the fairytales and brought you into the courtyard where there was a giant Christmas tree.

The Firebird is a Russian story and one of the more unusual fairytales to be represented

There were a couple of other Christmas specialities at Longleat, the first was the story of the Enchanted Christmas Tree. In the courtyard, a story was narrated, centred around the giant Christmas tree where the lights on the tree changed colour and visually told the story and images were also projected onto the opposite building to accompany the tale of a child’s journey to find an enchanted Christmas tree.

The other special Christmas show was the Flight Before Christmas where a lady sat on stage telling a story of Christmas in the forest and owls flew silently in a triangular pattern around the dimly lit room, flying so low that they brushed some of the audience as they soared past. I love birds, probably more than any other animals and owls are a particular favourite, so I adored this show.

Arctic animals from the Snow Queen are all made of silk for the Light Festival

It was a marvellous day at Longleat, I thoroughly enjoyed it and it’s made me want to go back there again to see another Festival of Lights. Who knows what the theme will be for the next Christmas season, but I’m willing to bet it will be just as spectacular as this one.

I visited Longleat to see the Festival of Light in December 2017

There’s still time to catch the Longleat Festival of Light

It’s on for another week until 7 January 2018.

For more adventure ideas in England, check out these posts.
Yorkshire: Gaping Gill Winch Meet
Norfolk: Hiking the Pingo Trail

Liechtenstein. A double landlocked Alpine principality sandwiched between Austria and Switzerland. And I didn’t know much more about it before I went.

Now one of the problems with Liechtenstein and the likely reason it receives so few visitors (it’s the second least visited country in Europe after Moldova), is it’s like Hull, in that you don’t pass through it to get to anywhere else. Liechtenstein is so small trains just go round it rather than through it. So, like Hull, you have to go to the effort of making a special journey if you want to see it. So I did. Liechtenstein, that is. Although as it’s so close to where I live, I’ve also been to Hull. Several times. Deliberately. Hull is worth the effort. But what about Liechtenstein?

All the statistics about this Alpine principality you never knew you needed to know

I’ll be honest, Liechtenstein isn’t somewhere I’m likely to visit again and again. Possibly not even one more time, in fact. But it was worth making the special journey to visit although I had no choice but to go to Vaduz on a Monday, which isn’t the ideal day to visit. In England, our museums are open just about every day, but in most countries on the Continent many of the museums close on a Monday and this is also true in Liechtenstein. The Postage Stamp Museum was open. And the Treasury. Had I been in Vaduz on a day when mainland Europe wasn’t shut, I could have spent longer in the city, as I would have liked to have visited the Fine Arts Museum and National Museum, but on Monday they were both closed. Maybe you’re thinking I should have gone to Vaduz on a different day, but you have to be somewhere on a Monday!

My snowy walk to view Vaduz Castle - on a Monday! — My snowy walk to view Vaduz Castle – on a Monday!

I spent 2 hours on a train to the Swiss border and after Zurich, the Alpine lake scenery on the way to Sargans was beautiful. It was winter, it was snowing, the lakes were grey rather than blue, but I loved the mountain scenery. After disembarking the train in Sargans, it was then a 20 minute bus ride to Vaduz, the capital of Liechtenstein.

Snow covered paths lead all over the outskirts of the city

Liechtenstein is very sleepy. And that includes Vaduz. Although it’s the country’s capital and it’s called a city, in a tiny country with a small population, the capital isn’t going to be very big.

Prince Hans-Adam II of Liechtenstein's wine tasting cellar — Prince Hans-Adam II of Liechtenstein’s wine tasting cellar

Somewhere in Vaduz that is nearly always open, including on Mondays, is the Hofkellerei des Fürsten von Liechtenstein, the Prince of Liechtenstein’s Winery, home to the Herawingert vineyards. It’s open from 8 o’clock in the morning and it is recommended to taste wine as early as possible when your taste buds are at their best. So on arrival in Vaduz at just after 10am, I walked to the winery.

Yes, Liechtenstein produces wine. Austrian wine is reasonably well known in England now. The Swiss production is so small they keep virtually all of it for themselves and export very little. I have tasted Swiss wine, but only in Switzerland. So if Swiss wine is difficult to find overseas, wine from Liechtenstein is going to be almost impossible to obtain outside of the principality. So this was my chance to try wine from Liechtenstein.

Three glasses of different Pinot Noir to taste

I did a wine tasting in the Prince’s cellar by special invitation from the prince. Part of that sentence may not be true. Seriously, it was Prince Hans-Adam II’s cellar, but of course he didn’t extend a special invitation to me personally.

90% of grapes grown in Liechtenstein are pinot noir, so that’s what you get to taste, a rosé, a red and an oaked red. They also produced a white pinot noir which I’d never tried before. I was inadvertently given the white pinot noir, but the rosé is so pale, you can barely tell a difference in the colour, the rosé is labelled as “feather white”. The white pinot noir was a light, dry wine, which was good, but the reds were the stars of the show. I do particularly like pinot noir, having tasted some very good quality pinot noir in Central Otago in New Zealand and in Oregon, both regions are renowned for this wine.

Traditional red Pinot Noir and a rosé so pale it's called "feather white" — Traditional red Pinot Noir and a rosé so pale it’s called “feather white”

The first pinot noir was a light, fruity wine, but it was very good. The oaked pinot noir was certainly more robust and it was an extremely good wine, but I did prefer the first one. I had been given 3 generous glasses of wine for a tasting, and despite having eaten breakfast at 6am, I had the foresight to bring a couple of cheese rolls with me to soak up some of the alcohol at this hour of the morning. Just as well, because after I’d finished drinking the 3 generous glasses, I asked if I could try the white pinot noir as I’d never had one before, unaware that I’d been given the white instead of the rosé to start with. The lady in the winery then discovered she’d given me white instead of rosé, so she gave me the rosé to taste and some more white so I could compare the two. She asked me if I liked schnapps, as she had a pinot noir grappa available to taste and then I’d have tried all of the pinot noir products they had on offer. I confirmed that I did. The rosé was another dry wine, but it was more fruity and less dry than the white. I did prefer the rosé. I’m not a huge fan of rosé as it’s generally too sweet for me, but the pinot noir grape doesn’t produce a sweet rosé wine, instead I was getting lots of fruit flavour.

Vaduz Castle overlooks the vineyard that I danced through in the snow!

Now I do enjoy wine, I have educated myself about it over the years and I try and taste local wine if I go to a wine producing country, but I don’t favour using all the fancy descriptions you hear wine experts say, which is why you’re only getting adjectives like fruity, dry and light! But these were good quality wines. The terrain and soil is apparently ideal for pinot noir and the quality of the wine I tasted confirmed this.

And did I try the grappa? Yes, I did. I got another very generous glass to taste. It was a good grappa, very smooth, but also very strong, I was still breathing fire 4 hours later!

Liechtenstein may not have its own currency, but it does have its own stamps, hence the Postage Stamp Museum

I bought a bottle of the pinot noir to take home with me to drink with my dad on New Year’s Eve, my mum isn’t a wine drinker so she won’t have a glass. It’s probably going to be our only opportunity to drink wine from Liechtenstein again.

Bearing in mind I’d drunk 5 glasses of wine and a glass of grappa at the tasting, I was practically dancing through the vineyard on the way out as the snow fell down around me. It snowed for the most of the 5 hours I was in Vaduz.

This is as close as you can get to the residence of Prince Hans-Adam II and his family

After the wine tasting I went to the Tourist Information Centre to get a postcard to send to my friend who collects them, I send one from as many places on my travels as I can and to get a stamp for my passport. The Tourist Centre in Vaduz has cashed in on the fact that people like evidence they’ve visited the principality. For 3 Swiss francs you can get your passport stamped. As I’m British and my passport is UK and an EU passport, I don’t get a stamp in any European country I visit at the moment. I was extremely disappointed when I visited Greenland in March, that as a dependency of Denmark, they don’t stamp your passport on arrival. Technically you’re still in Denmark. They even have a sign up at the airport saying “no souvenir stamps”. I would have happily paid a couple of pounds to have a Greenland stamp in my passport. But I have got a Liechtenstein stamp.

I then went to the Postage Stamp Museum to buy a ticket for the Treasury. The Postage Stamp Museum was free, but it was very small and probably only interesting to people who like stamps. Interesting fact, Liechtenstein has its own stamps, but doesn’t have its own currency. They use the Swiss franc here. So I saw some Liechtenstein postage stamps in the museum, but as I have no more than a passing interest in stamps I didn’t stay long.

It's going to be a colossal Christmas Market in Parliament Square! — It’s going to be a colossal Christmas Market in Parliament Square!

The Treasury was very good though. A large collection of Faberge eggs, a crown, some weaponry, some beautiful paintings, I particularly liked the ones of the Rhine Falls and the view of Vaduz, but the most fascinating thing in the museum was in the final cabinet, two Liechtenstein flags that had gone to the moon and now were proudly displayed with their accompanying pieces of moon rock! I found it fascinating that such a tiny country had sent, not just one, but two flags to the moon on two separate moon landings and each flag had its own pieces of moon rock. Maybe the Prince of Liechtenstein is interested in space travel? I would recommend looking around the Treasury. I think the fact that I was in Vaduz in winter (and on a Monday!) could have had something to do with it being so quiet, but I had a very slow wander around the Treasury and I was on my own the entire time, apart from the security guard sitting in while I was looking at the paintings and exhibits. The Treasury was dimly lit and no photos were allowed, hence the absence of photos from the Treasury. And I bet you were all dying to see the Liechtenstein flags and their accompanying pieces of moon rock weren’t you?

Sculptures at the entrance to the Cathedral of St Florin

From there it was a walk through the small town and past the Parliament building. There were some huts in the square, there in readiness for the Christmas Market starting at the weekend. They also had some huts near the Town Hall and an ice skating rink all ready for the Christmas market visitors.

Beautiful stained glass windows in the interior of the Cathedral of St Florin

A little further on from the Parliament building was the cathedral. When you think of cathedrals you think of huge, imposing churches, but this was Liechtenstein where everything was on a smaller scale. The “Cathedral” of St Florin is the parish church of Vaduz and it is also the burial place for the royal family. You can’t see the tombs of the royals, but you can go into the cathedral. The beautiful stained glass windows were very striking and it was also very peaceful. Unlike most cathedrals that always have crowds of visitors inside, St Florin was empty. It was nice to go into a peaceful chapel.

I also hiked up to see Vaduz Castle. Sadly Prince Hans-Adam II of Liechtenstein had not invited me to join him and his family for afternoon tea and it is the royal residence, so you can look at it from the outside, but you can’t go in. Prince Hans-Adam II obviously has enough money to make it unnecessary to open his home up to the public. It is a lovely walk up there on a snow covered path, there are lots of information boards in 3 languages telling you everything you never knew you needed to know about Liechtenstein as you hike the trail and you get wonderful views of the mountains from up there too, even though the low cloud meant the visibility was quite poor and wasn’t the best for taking photos. But I didn’t mind that. I love mountain regions. They’re beautiful in the summer, but they’re absolutely magical in the winter with all the snow. Personally I prefer to visit mountain regions in the winter, although I enjoy hiking in the mountains too, which is a lot easier, and in some cases, only possible in the summer. As mentioned before, I’m a hopeless skier, so skiing isn’t really an option for me.

Preparing the skating rink in front of the Town Hall in readiness for the Christmas Market

I took a different path down from the castle to go past the landmark Red House, perched on the side of a hill, built in 1338 and painted red in the 19th century. It was a monastery in the past, but is now a private residence, so you can’t see inside. I think the point of the Red House though, is to see it from the outside.

And that was it, my time in Liechtenstein was up, time to walk to the bus stop to get to the station in time to catch my train. And will I visit Liechtenstein again? Maybe. But not on a Monday!

I travelled to Liechtenstein in December 2017.

I went wine tasting at the Hofkellerei des Fürsten von Liechtenstein within easy walking distance from Vaduz city centre. It costs 9CHF to taste 3 wines.

Tickets for the Treasury cost 8CHF and can be purchased from the Postage Stamp Museum which are located in the same building. Entry to the Postage Stamp Museum is free.

Liechtenstein Passport stamps cost 3CHF and are available from the Liechtenstein Tourist Information Centre in Vaduz city centre and the Postage Stamp Museum.

All the proof you need to say you've visited Liechtenstein — All the proof you need to say you’ve visited Liechtenstein

I travelled to Vaduz from Switzerland. You can get a train to Sargans and then a connecting bus from Sargans Railway Station to Vaduz Post in the city centre. I bought a Swiss Saver Day Pass for 52CHF which was valid from midnight until 05.00am the following day on the Swiss Rail Network and selected buses, including into Liechtenstein. Prices vary depending on how far in advance the ticket is purchased. Full details are available on the Swiss Railways website.

Month: December 2017

Wiltshire: Longleat Festival of Light

Liechtenstein: Wine Tasting in the Prince’s Cellar