I wanted to quickly share some of the photos I took during my visit to The Cotswold Wildlife Park this spring. I actually had this post all ready to go in April, but it somehow got lost in my drafts. Oops!
My sister and I had a lovely day out there on the first warm day of spring in April. It was my first trip out to anywhere other than medical appointments or the shops since last July, so I can't begin to tell you how good it felt to be out and about doing something fun for a change, especially with all the blossom on the trees, and pretty spring flowers blooming wherever we turned.
The Walled Gardens looked particularly gorgeous with so many unusual varieties of tulips and daffodils (as well as many others) catching our eye as much as the animals. I wish I had taken better photos, as mine really don't do their gardens justice.
We saw so many amazing animals during our visit, from otters and penguins to tapirs and wolves, but I think this trip's highlights were the wolverines, anteaters, and rhinos.
We got to see the wolverines having feeding-time zoomies around their outdoor enclosure, and it was fun to see them galloping around at full-speed, while their keeper went in, armed with just a broom for protection. I've never seen them so active before.
I was also really excited to see the giant anteaters out and about for the first time in about a decade. I managed to capture this little guy going for a stroll along the back of its paddock, and stopping for a quick snack at a tree. I've never seen an anteater feeding in real life before, especially not naturally, so that was pretty cool to see.
Another highlight was finally getting to see their two rhino calves. I'd wanted to go see them since they were born weeks apart last autumn, so it was nice to see the overgrown puppies before they got big. I don't know what it is about rhinos, but I just find them adorable.
Oh, and we also met a couple who had brought their animal-loving French bulldog to the wildlife park as a birthday treat, and isn't that just the most wholesome thing ever? They were holding him up to see the tamarins, and he was being such a good boy, quietly wagging his tail at them. It was so cute.
I wish I could take Rosie for a visit, but I wouldn't dare, as, judging by the way she goes ballistic at squirrels and cats, I just know all hell would break lose if she saw something new, like a monkey or a meerkat. We'd probably get kicked straight out. Haha!
So, overall, we had another lovely visit to The Cotswold Wildlife Park, and even though we've been approximately 8930921 times, we can't wait to go back.
If you've never been to The Cotswold Wildlife Park, and love animals and plants, I'd highly recommend it for a day out. It's a fantastic place to visit all year round, and I can attest that as a local, who's been taking day trips there all her life. Plus, it's on the edge of the beautiful Cotswolds, so you can come check out my part of the world!
It was my birthday at the beginning of July, and I spent it exploring a safari park for the very first time.
Another zoo birthday trip. Shocker!
We visited Longleat Safari Park in Wiltshire- somewhere I've wanted to visit for over twenty years, thanks to the TV show Animal Park. It's a couple of hours drive from home in Oxfordshire, so I never had, but after discovering that they had become the first zoo in Britain to add koalas and wombats to their menagerie (at least in my life time), I had to go see them. And I'm so glad we did as we had a fantastic time.
We did the safari first, and it was so much fun driving around and spotting so many cool animals in the English countryside, It kinda looked and felt like being in Jurassic Park without the dinosaurs. But, luckily for us, most of the animals on the other side of our car were a little less terrifying and inclined to eat us. (Though, only having a car between us and the big cats definitely got the heart-racing a little). We got to see all kinds of awesome animals including giraffes, rhinos, lions, cheetahs, tigers, wolves, camels, warthogs, deer, macaques, vultures, pelicans, and many more. I think the only animals we didn't spot were the hyenas, and elephant, which was surprising as the enclosures were big enough for everything to hide if they wanted to. It was lovely to see most of the animals given acres of space and kept in large family groups, allowing them to live as naturally as any animal can in captivity. I've never seen animals kept so well before, and you could see the difference in how content and healthy they looked.
Sorry for the quality of the photos from the safari section. My camera didn't want to cooperate through windows.
The highlight of the safari for me- besides seeing a warthog and a white Bactrian camel for the first time- was getting to feed the deer. You could buy little pots of deer pellets from a kiosk in their paddock, and then pull over and feed them out of the car window, so of course, we had to do it. I got to feed two of them at the same time, and they were huge and surprisingly strong, but so gentle and patient at the same time. I was even able to give one of them chin scratches while she ate.
We also all enjoyed driving in with the macaques, and having them climb all over the car. There must've been well over a hundred of them, including dozens of babies, and they were fearless. They threw themselves at the cars, and clambered over everything from the windscreens to the wing mirrors. They were a lot of fun to watch- especially when one started pulling the windscreen wipers off the car in front of us. Luckily, my brother-in-law had had the good sense to take the aerial off the car before we went in, and we only came away with a few tiny teeth marks on the roof, but if you don't want to risk your car, the route does allow you to skip the macaques without missing anything else. We just chose to risk it for the experience, and it was so worth it.
The safari took a couple of hours to complete, and afterwards, we parked up and explored the zoo. It's only small, but they had a really interesting collection of animals to see that you don't see everywhere, so I really enjoyed myself. There were animals you'd expect to see like meerkats, tamarins, macaws, and porcupines, more unusual animals like the amazing binturong, aardvarks, and adorable little fennec foxes, and even some animals we'd never seen before like koalas, hairy-nosed wombats, giant river otters, and an adorable little rat-like marsupial called a brush-nosed bettong.
It's not often I see an animal I've never seen before, so seeing several made my day. I was amazed by the size of the otters- they were almost as big as basset hounds, and so much cuter than they look in photos or on TV.
The koalas were absolutely adorable, and I now understand Sheldon Cooper's koala-face- I was watching them exactly the same way. The wombat was sadly asleep in its den, so I didn't get a good look at it, but it was another little cutie I wanted to smuggle home.
Another highlight of the day was feeding nectar to the rainbow lorikeets in their walk-through aviary. Sadly, none of them landed on me, but I got to feed this sweet little guy. I could feel his little tongue lapping up the nectar through the pot, and that's something I never thought I'd say!
We then went and took a boat trip on the lake, which was included in the price of the ticket. It took about twenty minutes and took us along a half mile of lake which is home to a group of California sealions and their last surviving hippo, and there was also an island with colobus monkeys to spot, and a group of gorillas on one of the banks. Apparently, the lake it also home to wild beavers that established themselves there, but we sadly didn't manage to spot any. (I've always wanted to see one).
It was lovely to see the sealions living in such a big lake, instead of stuck in a small pool, trained to do tricks for people's amusement. I've never seen sealions kept in such a way before, and they looked so content swimming about or sunbathing on the docks with their pups. A few of them noisily chased the boat waiting for the fish people could buy to feed them, and we had sealions alongside us pretty much the entire way down. I didn't feed them as I was too sore to move by this point and was enjoying the rest, but it was fun to watch them jumping out of the water as people threw fish. I'd definitely recommend fitting the boat trip in to your day if you visit.
Somehow, we accidentally forgot to visit the monkey and farmyard sections, and we didn't explore the other attractions, either, but there is a lot more to do and see at Longleat, especially with kids. There was a maze, gardens, a steam train that goes around the zoo, and a variety of shops and restaurants including an orangery and an old-fashioned sweet shop. You can also pay extra to take a tour of Longleat House, their 16th century manor house, but after spending £39.95 each just to see the animals, we weren't so eager to look inside.
The only real negative I can really think about Longleat-besides the price- was accessibility. It is fully-accessible- they even allow mobility scooters on the boats- but the place to rent mobility scooters was a long walk away from the car park. A good five minute walk on steady legs. It's far from ideal for anyone who has difficulty walking distances. They also required you to leave something of value when you rented a scooter (costs £20, non refundable) to ensure you'd return it- like keys or a wallet. My sister wasn't comfortable with it but left her car keys, and when she returned, the lady had trouble finding them! It wasn't well-organised at all. There were also quite a lot of turns around the animal enclosures that made manoeuvring the scooter a little tricky, and a couple of the walk-through-enclosures had a lock mechanism that required the previous gate to lock before the next could open, without enough space for a scooter in between. On the plus side, the paths and aisles are wide and roomy, and it leaves you lots of room to move and breathe, and the scooters are plus-size friendly.
Minor grumbles aside, we had a brilliant day out at Longleat Safari Park, and really enjoyed our first time seeing animals on safari. There was a great variety of animals, the scenery was gorgeous, and it felt completely safe. I'd definitely go back again in the future, and I hope that one day I will.
Have you been to Longleat Safari Park? When was the last time you visited a zoo or safari park?
