I realise that the title ‘Alpaca Walks at Sandy Balls’ is a little…strange, but bear with me!
The kids had last week off school for half term (most schools seem to be on half term this week?), so we headed off on our annual ‘Freeman Family’ UK break, where for the past few years we’ve stayed somewhere in the UK with Adam’s side of the family- parents, brother/sister-in-laws, nieces, the lot! On this occasion we were staying for the first time in The New Forest, at Sandy Balls Holiday Village (I know, I sniggered too), a place where the whole world seems to have stayed before us (honestly, almost every person I spoke to at the kids school has been before and loved it).
Sandy Balls is one of those fab places where you stay in lovely lodges and is ideal for families who like to be active. We partook in the usual swimming, biking, crafts and pottery painting, adventure playground exploring and more, but one of the highlights that I wanted to share here on the blog was Alpaca walking- BLOODY ALPACA WALKING!!!
Seriously, I think I was more excited than the children, and for £15 per alpaca (so one per family really) you got to go on a beautiful walk around the holiday park with your new woolly chum.
This is something we have certainly never done before, and all 3 of our children plus our nieces loved it. It’s funny, as our kids have always been quite nervous of dogs but a huge alpaca (well, in comparison to them) was a piece of cake and they weren’t frightened at all. Even Arlo, who is tiny, had zero fear and trotted off merrily with Archie, our alpaca (I have a video of this over on my Instagram account which is just adorable!).
We had a group of 4 alpacas (Archie, Alfie, Pickle and Inca) with us, and they were so gentle with the kids, yet could be really quite cheeky when it came to snatching bites of grass and heading over quite quickly to their favourite spots.
The alpacas were clearly very well cared for and their handlers gave us a pep talk and a bit about them before we headed off (they have 4 stomaches, just like a cow apparently #alpacaFacts). I think it’s such a great way of raising money for their keep at 15 quid a pop (they do a few outings a day each) and such a lovely experience for both adults and children- we all came away laughing and with huge smiles on our faces.
Now I’m just wondering if I could get away with an alpaca on the school run…
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