Coniston - 29/7/09

Mum and dad went off to Walney Island today to get attacked by gulls, which is apparently something they enjoy. The rest of us, noting it was bloody raining again, headed to Barrow for the Docks Museum. Originally one of those “ho ho, let's go to the Docks Museum, that must be almost as interesting as the Pencil Museum” deals, it was now our only feasible wet-weather option left. And it turned out to be pretty good. Though small – it was free – it was lively and informative, and fortunately about Barrow itself rather than just docks. The town flew up out of nothing in the nineteenth century when mineral mining in the Lakes took off and the railways opened up the Cumbrian coast. It also turned its hand to building ships and, more recently, nuclear submarines. But it's been in hard times for a long while, getting bombed to shit in WWII and contracting dramatically due to economics. The museum was also quite defensive about Barrow being a bit of a dump. Certainly, from the bits we saw, it seems largely composed of bleak industrial estates. The weather had cleared up by the time we left, so we decided to head for the nearby zoo. Now, I'm never entirely sure about zoos. The best ones, I think, are like Barrow Zoo, which lets some animals wander all over the place as if they own it. We mocked the signs at the entrance warning us of the wild lemurs. But there the buggers were, scampering all over the playground. In another area emus were wandering leisurely across the path. Otherwise the primates were the star attraction: the spider monkeys scampering over the raised walkway, the gibbon casually making a heart-stopping drop to a branch twenty feet below. Best of all, a monkey lying on a giant tortoise; and giving us a glare which clearly said “Well? Why shouldn't I lie on giant tortoises?” Less impressive were the lions (asleep, as always) and the tiger feeding session, which was a twenty minute lecture followed by a five second glimpse of a tiger eating a chicken. Anyway, the girls enjoyed themselves, and Gemma got a cuddly lemur to compliment Emily's gibbon which she wears everywhere as a sort of rucksack. Lorna has a dinosaur egg but it's not hatched yet, and I'm a bit worried what will happen when it does.