Up close and personal

One of my Xmas presents from Judith was a "meerkat experience", one of those experiences you get in Boots and Smiths in boxes - fast cars, ballooning, pampering days etc. This was the opportunity to interact with some iconic small furry beasts. I booked it at a place in the middle of nowhere in the Fens, near Ely. It's called The Animal Experience (www.animalexperience.org).The website looked "interesting" and I had no idea really what to expect when we got there.
On arrival it looked interesting. A carpark and a few wooden huts. Once we got in though it was really good. It's a small operation run by one extended family and they have a variety of creatures on site you can meet - snakes, coatis, spiders, lizards and of course the meerkats.

We were given 10 minutes to look around and then taken into to meet the stars of the show. Lee greeted us and showed us around. There were 3 in our cabin (it was a log cabin converted into a meerkat enclosure), a female and a mother and youngster. Lee, who was showing us around sat with us for about an hour whilst we were with them and was very educational. As you can see from the photos we just sat on the floor or on a seat and the meerkats crawled all over us! The vocalisations were amazing - you could immediately hear different ones for food or fun or calling each other.

After a very enjoyable hour with our new friends the meerkats, and really recommended.
On the way back, we stopped off near Royston for another bit of up close and personal - this time playing with a macro lens and some insects on flowers. It was windy and there wasn't that much around, but we did manage to get a few decent images, mainly of bees and hoverflies.