Roadtripping in the UK

Stefan Verhoeven

Stefan Verhoeven

Well-Known Member
5+ year member
After planning a holiday I thought I wouldn't post too much about the trip on ZooChat. But being inspired by @snowleopard I planned to visit some more zoos and put some summary of my trip on this forum. I am travelling to meet some friends, and doing holidays. I don't have a fully planned stay, but like to travel in a way that fits my mood and weather on that day. With a possible heathwave the upcoming days, and me not being very heat resistant, it could be that I reduce zoo time.

When visiting zoos I always like to take photographs (check my instagram: stefanverhoevenphotograpy or the photos I posted on ZooChat) but with a specific style, therefore I am quiet picky about photography opportunities. Animal whise, I have a broad interest, but I like more the small obscure animals than the ABC animals, with a slight preference for birds and fishes and some specific favorites like mongoose, dik-dik and all Suidea.

I left very early 3 days ago by car to travel thru the tunnel. I must say a very comfortable way of travelling. Driving on the other side of the road then I normally do, never proved to be a problem to me. Only thing that happend was that something hit my window with a big bang and now I have a crack in my window from over 50 cm/20 inches. I can only hope that the window will hold up till I am back home. Driving around and looking through my cracked window I am realizing that the concept of electrical powered or hybrid cars isn't something significant in the UK. I think I haven't seen any electric car yet. In the Netherlands they are much more popular. The popularity is mostly in the people who drive a lot for their business, and they get a tax reduction for driving in an electric car.

ZSL Whipsnade Zoo
The grounds were busy at arrival, mostly with families with kids. I parked my car outside on the free parking space. But for people who are less happy to walk a lot, that wouldn't be a good idea. The area is vast and enclosures are far apart compared to most zoos. By paying a little fee, you can get your car in and drive thru the zoo.
I started in the all new aquarium that opened in the end of July 2019. Not many aquariums there, but a lovely set up with uncommon fishes. Most of the time the fishtanks are mixed with a land based animal like a spider species, a lizard species or a praying mantis species. There are not the common flashy fishes and also not things like a standard amazon aquarium. Even for a fish nerd as myself this was a very high class setup: beautifully naturally decorated with an interesting mix of (freshwater) fish that I haven't seen before in zoos. Some decent information about their habitat, the behaviour of the fish and their threats to survival completed the area. After the aquarium you get thru the butterfly house. A lovely small butterfly house, but nothing new for a zoo nerd, but a great attraction for the general (and most important type of) visitors.
Notable other things in the zoo are:
+ the huge exhibits for a lot of animals: elephants, camels, deer, antelope, white rhinos, oryx.
+ 4 very young tigers visible thru camerafootage
+ gaurs, a rare species in zoos, but beautiful animals. They have a succesfull breeding pair, together with their offspring. The offspring are some castrated males and a female getting old enough to breed. For now the male is on contraceptives.
+ I liked the signs with flashbacks about the history of the place or their past with certain species.
+ a nice group of red river hogs for me as a fan of hogs/pigs
+ some northern rockhopper pinguin. Does anybody know how many they have? I have seen only 2.
+ some free ranging Muntjac, mara and wallibie help to keep the grass tidy
- in my previous visits to zoos in the UK I was most of the time suprised by the shops, with nice books for adults and most of the time also a good book about the zoo itself. But in this shop I coudn't find anything for myself.

To sum up, for me ZSL Whipsnade Zoo was a pleasurable place, with some very large enclosures. There is a nice mix of mammal species in this zoo. I loved the new aquarium, but don't expect the flashy fish or huge tanks, this is a great aquarium in a different way. For people who are less able to walk, it's a good place because you can go in by car. For bird lovers it's not a good zoo, but for me it was compensated by the aquarium.
 
Pertinax said:
Port Lympne is very close to the Channel tunnel, while Howletts is about half an hour away by car. Howletts also have a big group (about 10) of RR Hog. Will you visit these?
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Thanks for the heads up on the RR hog Pertinax! I visited Port Lympne last year, and due to other obligations I was too early in the tunnel to wait for Howletts to open this year. That zoo was on my first list, but in the end had to wait for another trip.
 
Visiting zoos is infectious. If you are following my example, then I must warn you that you can blink and be at 516 zoos and have a ridiculous number of zoo maps that are essentially worthless to just about everyone else on the planet. ;) The perils of being a zoo nerd...

Thanks for the review of Whipsnade, especially the remarks about the new Aquarium section. Keep those reviews coming!
 
For my second zoo day, I visited 2 places.
The crack in my window is growing, but not yet in an alarming rate. Even on my second day I didn't see any electric car yet.
One of the other things I was wondering about during my first three zoo visits, is the amount of children that are kept on a leash in the zoo. In the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium this is a very rare thing to see, and considered as bad parenting that you can't control your 2-4 year old without a leash.

Yorkshire Wildlife Park
This park is only 10 years old, and it shows. All enclosures are quiet new and in the same style and most of the trees are still small. The park itself was busy, even on this hot day. For families there were enough playing facilities, picknick places and toilets available.
Animal wise they should have over 400 animals in more than 70 species, almost all are mammals. Due to the heat not all the animals were very active, but whose to blame for that. I was also not as active as normal :p I am in my life a bit spoiled species wise, so not too much new. Most mentionable are for me Amur leopards, okapi, giant otters and Grevy zebras. Also there are also Visayan warthy pigs and Eastern black rhino's who are for me a rearity, as they are not common on the continent, but in the UK they both seem to be popular species. There are 4 polar bears, and they seem to be the star attraction in the zoo, looking at the amount of people in front of the exhibits. I didn't know that polar bears were almost non existing in UK zoos, but I do now. Since Knut, the zoos on the continent seems to be all starting with polar bears, and they are not uncommon anymore there. The enclosures for the polar bears are big, as almost all other exhibits are. All the animals seem to be enjoying their enclosures as they have more space than most of their counterparts in other zoos.
On the side where the tigers are, is construction going on for new exhibits. But nothing is stated in the zoo about what is going to be created there, although one thing is sure, it's going to be big enclosures!
To summarize: it's a zoo with big enclosures and some interesting species. At this zoo, I realised that I like some old and quirky things in a zoo. I should have known, because I also like older en quirkier houses more than new build. Although the zoo is a very good and nice zoo, I am sorry to say that the zoo just didn't do it for me. I am really annoyed that it is this way...

Twycross Zoo
I was talking about old and quirky at Yorkshire Wildlife Park, this is it. Some new and some old battered enclosures, a maze of paths, many dead ends, always thinking you made the wrong turn or you missed something.... But if you getting enthousiastic by seeing a monkey, this is the place to be! Species after species, and if you think you have seen them all, think again, there are even more! They have the four great apes: bonobo, chimpanzee, gorilla and orang-utan and seem to be the only one in the UK who can say that. But apart from those species they have many more: Siamang, agile gibbons, pileated gibbons, northern white-cheeked gibbons, howler monkeys, Diana monkeys, De Brazza's, L'Hoest's, red titi 3 species of langurs, 4 species of lemurs, 2 species of spider monkeys, 2 species of tamarin, 2 species of marmoset, western guereza and for sure some more that I already forgot. I am not the biggest monkey man, but I enjoyed the impressive amount of species at this place. But even if you don't like monkeys there are still some other interesting species: snowleopards, amur leopards, kirk dik-dik (as said before I love dik-diks), michie's tufted deer, yellow throated marten and zebrafinches :) (my other hobby is keeping zebrafinches). The gibbon house that was opened in 2016 was great, nice spaces inside and outside and active animals. The array of monkey species was impressive. But in general there was much construction work going on and more is needed, because I got a bit of tattered feel when I think about the zoo. Nevertheless I did enjoy this place. Seems to be I am more a species collector than an enclosure guy :oops:
 
My forth zoo visited this trip is Bristol Zoo.
Great to have a zoo that opens before 10 am. With an hour difference and me being awake on the continent around 6 in the morning, means I am up in the UK around 5 am. So an earlier start was highly appreciated.
The zoo welcomes around 500.000 visitors a year and first opened his doors in 1836. Therefor it's an older zoo, with some old buildings, and some improvements in the years. It's a small city zoo of only 12 acres/4.9 ha. They state that it hasn't got the space to keep giraffe or elephant anymore, like they did in the past. They now specialize in smaller species and breeding endagered ones as can be read in the zoo. Gorilla and asiatic lions are the biggest species they have and still don't swim in space. The zoo has many play yards, benches to sit and grass to play on for families. There is also a kind of canopy track where you have to pay extra for, but was very popular for the slightly older children. For me the nocturnal animal house, the reptile house and the invertabrate collection were holding the most interesting species. Most memorable species in the zoo were Aye-aye, eastern quoll, naked mole-rat, lord howe stick insect, livingstone's flying fox, desertas wolf spider, drills, leka keppe barombi mbo cichlid and bearded pygmy chameleon. Some other are notable, but getting more common when you visited more zoos, like partula snails, butterfly splitfin, mountain chicken and socorro dove and yet another UK zoo with Visayan warthy pigs.
Not many world class exhibits, but the Agile gibbon enclosure was nice, the pingiun and seal area were nice for visitors and in general the terraria and aquaria where spacious and not overcrowded. Coming to the conclusion earlier on that I liked the older zoos, this visit was very much enjoyed due to the many interesting species. Unfortunately yet another zoo where I didn't find anything of my liking in the zoo shop.
 
Stefan Verhoeven said:
Even on my second day I didn't see any electric car yet.
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You're much more likely to see self-charging hybrid cars here (like the Toyota Prius) than fully-electric. The former are increasingly common but fully-electric is yet to take off in a big way (there hasn't been the big investment in infrastructure just as yet).

Stefan Verhoeven said:
I didn't know that polar bears were almost non existing in UK zoos, but I do now.
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Yes indeed - there was a gap of about a decade with no Polars in England at all before YWP got them in - though Edinburgh/Highland had at least one animal through that time in Scotland so they never disappeared from the UK as a whole. Still only at Highland and Yorkshire (though that means we have a very high average standard of Polar Bear enclosure!).
 
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Stefan Verhoeven said:
The crack in my window is growing, but not yet in an alarming rate.
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You may have come across this already, but many supermarket car parks have windscreen-crack repair tents (or at least they used to). Might be worth keeping an eye out for.
 
I revisted WWT Slimbridge (see: Small UK trip for my review from last year) just to see the andean and jameson flamingo's. Slimbridge was on route, so I couldn't ignore the place after last years great visit. I had hoped for some decent photo moments, but it seems I used all my luck last year. Animals didn't behave as nice as last year and plants have grown a bit so certain viewingpoint became poor for photography. Nevertheless I still enjoyed seeing the two flamingo species again. @Ned I still loved the shop, for me the best zoo shop I ever visited. I bought another 3 books :rolleyes:
 
Visited Noah's Ark Zoo Farm.
This will be a short review. It's clearly set as a family zoo, with a lot of farm animals and places for children to play around. The children seemed to enjoy the zoo, so it works. The housing is in general ok. The size of the enclosures is spacious, but everything is very straight forward, with short grass, wooden poles with mesh wire and nothing more. There doesn't seem to be much if any enrichment going on in most of the enclosures. There are mostly ABC animals, most special are spectacled bears. All in all a very short visit, with a high enterance fee comparing it to other zoos in the UK, with much more species and animals kept.
 
After driving around for 4 days in the UK I finally have seen my first electric car, a Tesla and 2 days later a Nissan leaf. So now I can stop wondering. The leashed kids still amaze me. I have seen one kid that I think was around 10 years old, still on a leash in the zoo.
Another thing that is different to the Netherlands is that there are more morbid obese people in the UK. The Dutch are getting fatter also, but not on the scale what I have been seeing in the UK. I hope we can all turn it around this generation, because it's getting one of the most serious health risks at the moment in my opinion.

After the heath of last week, I decided to get away from the high temperatures and went to the South-West of England. That was a good choice as it was perfect zoo weather with around 22 degrees Celsius, compared to the record breaking 33 at Heathrow that same day.
I started of in Newquay Zoo. I arrived perfectly on time at 10.00 but parking was a big pain. I found a spot and wanted to pay, but I you could pay by cash, but only per hour. And I was 10p short to pay for 2 hours (I had 10p in 5p coins but those coins were not accepted), so it would only count 1 hour and that was just not long enough. The other option was to download an app and it would take "only 60 seconds" to pay. After downloading it asked for my licenceplate, but being not a UK car, it didn't recognise it. So I had to fill in a lot of extra information. After that he asked for a lot of other personal information and to finish of the app only accepted payment by credit card. But in the Netherlands we have a different bank system and normally don't have a credit card. So also this failed after filling in every possible information. So I went to the zoo, waited in the queue changed some money and went back to the parking place to pay for 2 hours. A lot of people were complaining around the parking meter, so I was clearly not the only one annoyed. It took me in total 20 minutes to pay for the parking, and I must say it took some of the joy away of visiting a new zoo. In the zoo there are some nice species, like owston's civet, fishing cats, saluwesi black crested macaques and phillipine spotted dear. I came across more Visayan warthy pigs, they seem to be almost as common as mara this zoo trip :D There is also a walk thru aviary with some nice species of birds. The zoo itself is small, with most of the exhibits on the small side in my opinion. The mature planting and trees gives it a nice feel, and you can not overview the place, so you want to find out what is behind the corner (totally different than Noah's Ark where you could oversee most of the zoo after entering). An ok zoo to visit while you are in the area, but a bit too far off and not special enough to make a trip to Newquay only for the zoo in my opinion.
 
Maguari said:
You're much more likely to see self-charging hybrid cars here (like the Toyota Prius) than fully-electric. The former are increasingly common but fully-electric is yet to take off in a big way (there hasn't been the big investment in infrastructure just as yet).
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The real problem is the batteries, and storing the energy... The short battery life of your mobile phone or electric drill, reduces its life and renders it valueless second-hand, so you simply throw it away. Speaking to our local Nissan dealer, the economics of their all-electric Leaf are interesting - roughly £40,000 new less a huge publically funded subsidy, and then no road tax. At five years old when a second-hand purchaser might be concerned over imminent battery failure, and a truly huge replacement bill, the machine is worth £2000 and the dealers are having to buy them back... Perhaps that is why they are rare? I don't suppose the batteries in Dutch ones are any different?
 
My next visit during my UK trip was Exmoor Zoo.
Driving thru the street towards the zoo I was wondering if I made the right choice, it was such a narrow street, that it couldn't hold any large amount of cars. What does that say about the zoo I am going to?
This zoo is a heaven for species collectors, some very rare ones over there and an impressive amount of canids and felines. Just to name a few: New guinea singing dog, fanaloka, ringtail, yellow throated marten, tyra, fishing cat, maned wolves, black lemur. I liked also to see arabian sandcats (coming originally from Al Wabra) again. They were one of my favorite animals at Al Wabra (and saying that as a bird guy that isn't really into felines says enough).The zoo itselfs has a bit of an outdated feel over it, and the housing in general is not very impressive and just about sufficient for most species. The viewing windows are perfect for my photography hobby and are kept very clean, even during the day. Some windows are not from glass but from plastic, what is not ideal for photography, but gives just enough opportunity to at least watch the animals without bars between you.
Enclosure wise not much special going on there, but species wise and for photography is was a really nice zoo. The zoo itself gave me a bit of a feel like Best zoo in the Netherlands with some nice species but many kind of old enclosures that are all on the small side. I enjoyed the visit very much and I was the last visitor to leave the zoo. "Are you the guy in the overflow parking with the Dutch car?"
 
It is very much home built, perhaps the best enclosure is that of the sitatunga. I always find the staff very friendly.
 
Indeed the sitatunga exhibit could be the best one (and most spacious). The signing said that there should have been also sarus cranes in the same enclosure, but I could find them. Are they still there? I also found the staff very friendly, speaking for the keepers but also the people in the shop and diner facilities.
 
After my day in Newquay and Exmoor, I went to Torquay.
I started of in Shaldon Zoo on my 3 zoos-in-one-day trip. Shaldon Zoo is a very small zoo, where I was the first to enter. The rain just finished and the animals were being fed, so many were inside at my arrival. Most inside areas have viewing windows, so most animals were visible (only the margay was a no show). The zoo seems to be specialized in small primates. The enclosures seem to be suitable, but some were on the small side. For me the special species were: 3 species of loris at one place, pied tamarins, red-bellied lemur, java mouse deer, brush-tailed bettong, owston's civet. All in all a nice, but short visit. And off again for the next zoo...
 
Stefan Verhoeven said:
I started of in Shaldon Zoo on my 3 zoos-in-one-day trip...
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I wonder what the other two zoos could possibly be... :rolleyes: Seriously though, the Torbay area must be one of the premium zoo-visiting destinations in the UK. :)

Loving the thread by the way. :)
 
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