We scampered across the highway in search of goats. The woman in the gift shop had told us the goats generally hung out to the right of the river, but the fellow at the ticket booth, who gave us a map to the park, said you couldn’t count on that. Mr. M’s patience for goat hunting was limited. The day was progressing; he didn’t think we had the hour or more needed to do the full loop around the park. So I had my fingers crossed that we weren’t off on a wild goose—er, goat--chase.
We started down the wrong path, of course, but fortunately I realized our mistake almost immediately and we were able to backtrack and get on the right path within a few minutes. If you link to the map, above, you can see where we went wrong—the sort of dotted line on the far right—and then the path we were supposed to take—the dashed line going down between the tree pairs.
You can see that this park is very different from the topiary garden, yet it was laid out by the same man. This is more like the “modern” landscape design of Capability Brown and Humphry Repton.
The River Kent was on our left.
I was hoping the goats weren’t on the other side of the river, because if they were, I suspect Mr. M would have insisted on giving up and turning back. So when we came upon some walkers heading toward us, I asked if there were goats around and they said yes, indeed, that the herd was down near the gate. I had no idea where the gate was, but it was apparently on our side of the river, so I persuaded Mr. M. to keep going.
We came upon an odd chair-like object
.
and the “unusual herd of black fallow deer”
as well as the ubiquitous sheep.
We were on the verge of giving up, when we finally encountered the Bagot goats. This pair patiently posed for our many photos.
Mission accomplished, Mr. M. herded me back to catch the bus to Bowness.
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