West Yorkshire

[Sundae]

You lucky people! I wasn't struck down ill at all, and so went to Tropical World.
Now you have more photos to wade through...

A word about Roundhay Park in Leeds. The place is absolutely enormous. For a park just outside a good sized city I mean, in England, which is short on space in general (England specifically, not Great Britain). It's 700 acres FFS. And it's not some sort of National Park where nature takes care of things. It's like your local park, but a heck of a lot bigger.

I went there a couple of times when I was in the nuthouse, but that was during the Winter, and trust me the wind is painful when it has 700 acres to whistle through before it hits your bruised face. I went as a pilgrimage, because both Jeremy Dyson and Neil Gaiman have used it as a setting for stories. Dyson lived in (or probably just outside of) Leeds, and has mentioned the place many times in interviews.

This Summer I will investigate the place properly. when it's warm and sunshiny for real. There surely must be some tame squirrels somewhere.

Today I used my Leeds Extra card to get into Tropical World for £2.
The full adult fee is £5, which I think is still worth the money, but I was warm and entertained for approx 1.5 hours for about the price of a coffee in Starbucks. I say it's a deal, it's a steal.

I imagine on a weekday in term time it's pretty quiet. I had to queue. But it was as I said above - somewhere to go to fill up a day which would have felt empty otherwise. When I came out the queue was HUGE, so I'm glad I went when I did (I would have been there earlier, but we won't talk about that).