Our visit to Richmond Great Park was slightly more difficult than usual as we went on a Sunday. This meant that a different part of the road network around the Park was closed. We enter from from the Richmond Gate and on a weekday go around the park in clock-wise direction past the Roehampton and Robing Hood Gates before turning up to Pen Ponds.
The road linking Richmond and Roehampton Gates is closed at the weekend so we had to anti-clockwise until we reached Broomhill Car Park. The road further on from this car park that links to the Robin Hood Gate is permanently closed.
From the Broomhill Car Park we walked across the Park to the two ponds looking for deer.
The first group of deer we came across were in long grass.
The stag in this group chased away young bucks and then another stag came over the far hill and started baying. The stag then set off towards the hill and gathered up ferns on his antlers before baying back at the bottom of the hill.
The new stag retreated so we were left watching a relaxed stag occasionally bellowing out.
We could hear more bellowing away to our right and we followed the sounds. Another even larger stag was out in the open and before he settled down we managed to capture some pictures.
We then walked back to Broomhill Car Park for a much later than planned breakfast of tea with bacon rolls.