Going to the Zoo

We have been staying down in Cheshire for a few days - catching up with some friends and family in the North West - at least those that we could fit in to a tight schedule. For a day out we took the kids to Chester Zoo. Unfortunately, they didn't have any spare enclosures so we had to bring them back again but we had a good look around whilst we were there.

Zoos often get a bad press and some of them merely exploit animals for profit. This balance between education and entertainment has always been rather precarious but the days of chimps' tea parties are over and the worlds major zoos are now more in to the business of conservation and breeding programmes. Chester Zoo is no exception but it also means it's rather expensive to run and as a result the entrance prices for the whole family are rather daunting. Fortunately for us, my brother-in-law is a zoologist and managed to get free passes for us. Still, as a family of five we still spent some £50 on refreshments and other expenses - it's not exactly the cheapest of days out. However, there is lots to see and do - in fact too much for small children to take in so we had to pick and choose.

We ended up seeing around half the exhibits - we decided to concentrate on the sort of animals that the kids would recognise. So we had lots of elephants, lions and tigers and fewer of the African antelopes with names that look like a bad hand at Scrabble. Even so, I did find the kids flagging towards the end of the day. It was also surprisingly busy. As the school holidays in England and Wales don't start for a couple of weeks I had expected it to be very quiet but there were several school parties attending from nearby Liverpool and Manchester which provided for a rather interesting exhibit of adolescent Lancastrian hominids. This did mean that, at times, I was having to hold up the younger children to see what the big cats were doing - mainly sleeping and looking bored in a similar way that small cats do.

Some of the smaller exhibits are, possibly, not that interesting for the younger children. I was very impressed to see a Komodo dragon there - admittedly a small one as the ones I've seen on the telly are more David Attenborough sized. But reptiles don't typically do that much at the best of times and this can get a bit much for under 5's as some of the animals can be nearly indistinguishable from the foliage. However, the elephants, penguins and various primates are much more obvious to young children even if they don't differentiate between them as anything more than "another monkey". Another good feature for the youngsters is the monorail which allows a good view of some of the larger enclosures but without the legwork.

However, the zoological highlight of the holiday actually arrived near the caravan park. It was next to the Sandstone Trail which runs from Frodsham in Cheshire to Whitchurch in Shropshire. Needless to say, we didn't walk the whole trail but it is the sort of thing that appeals to me as it has well made up paths so allows the amateur hiker a pleasant arboreal trek without having to become a machete wielding adventurer. I took the two boys along to help them run off some spare energy - or at least fall over and whinge about grazed knees for a couple of hours. There was a pond to the side of the path with what, at first, I thought were some sort of insects jumping across. On closer inspection it transpired to be hundreds of tiny frogs. It was an effort not to stand on them and I assume that they were not fully grown but just leaving their spawning ground and hopping into the undergrowth.

I managed to get a photo of one - not easy with a compact camera. For reference, this is actually sitting on my 8 year old son's hands and I would estimate that it was around 3mm-4mm in length - far removed from the big warty toads that I sometimes see in our garden.



So that was our natural history adventure: Elephants in the zoo and frogs on the campsite - it's quite surprising what you can find in the British countryside.