Whipsnade

Yesterday I went off to Whipsnade Zoo – somewhere I haven’t visited in decades. I remember doing it as a school trip, and also with family, but that’s a long time ago, so I thought while I’ve got some time, I’d see what it’s like these days.

I’m not a massive fan of zoos in general. I think the work they do for conservation, and allowing people to see these glorious animals, is amazing. The breeding programmes and so on are remarkable, and there’s a lot of value to them. But – ah, there’s always a but – I really don’t like seeing them in cages, and particularly when they exhibit ‘trapped’ behaviours.  I went to London Zoo about 30 years ago, and never went back – seeing (particularly) the polar bears just trapped on their plastic rocks with a tiny pool was a truly hateful experience.

It was a fairly crappy day when I arrived- grey, cloudy and with dollops of rain – but that was fine with me. I was hoping for less people anyway, just wanted to walk round the place and see what it was like. It’s bloody expensive – even in winter, it’s £18.50, and that’s with half the place closed up. That, in my humble opinion, is taking the piss.

Anyway.

The actual place is OK – although that doesn’t mean I actually want to re-visit it any time soon. A number of the animal environs are still too small, in my opinion – they’ve improved, certainly, but still several of them seem to be small, even for the number of animals within them.

The one that got to me the most was the tigers, where one of the two was just padding along the edge of the pen, back and forth. Maybe I caught it on an off day, but it brought back all the memories of that polar bear in London Zoo.

All told it was a good day, including walking somewhere around five miles. But I can think of other places I can do that without paying nearly £20 for the privilege, and where I don’t finish up slightly wishing I hadn’t gone in the first place…