A trip to the Dorset Steam Fair at Tarrant Hinton had been planned today with Mary and her friend Izzy being taken by Sara and me to this event so that they could take part in a cheerleading demonstration. We had all been given free tickets and VIP parking. We woke up to torrential rain this morning - as predicted by the weather forecasters - but no mention had been made that the event might be cancelled. After dropping off a document at the Salisbury Diocesan Office we drove to Tarrant Hinton. Unlike previous years the traffic was very light and we arrived in good time. As we pulled in, Sara received a message on her BlackBerry to say that the cheerleading demonstration had been cancelled due to the dangerous muddy conditions. We drove onto the site, initially to meet up with the other cheerleading members and parents, but as we drove down towards the car park we found that the ground had turned into a terrible muddy mess and at the bottom we were temporarily stuck before I managed to maneouvre the car and return back to the top and onto the A345. We stuck again on the way up and I really thought that we were going to have to get out an push. The car became splattered all over with mud so much so that it was difficult to see out of the side windows. Sara told the other cheerleading members that we daren't stop as we didn't want to get marooned at the site. Instead, we decided to drive to Blandford, top up with fuel for the car and fuel for ourselves - some fish and chips before driving further into Dorset to spend the afternoon at Monkey World. We arrived at the ape sanctuary at around 1 pm and stayed there until 5.30 pm. The rain continued on and off until about the final hour. We enjoyed wandering around and seeing the chimpanzees, and other apes and monkeys. Tonight I watched a couple of episodes of Rev. and the opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games before writing this.
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