It’s Morgans birthday soon and this year, rather than have a party we decided to have a day out at Chester Zoo with a couple of his friends. As it was half term last week, Anna took the day off work on Friday so that was the day that we all went to the zoo.<\/p>\n
I had to do a turbo trainer session and a run and for some reason didn’t sleep a single wink on Thursday night. I was then out of bed at 5ish and after some breakfast and some work jumped on the Turbo Trainer for an hour and then went out for a run. I then returned home, had a bath and joined in the general madness in the house of preparing to leave for the day. Picnics were being packed, camera batteries charged, decisions being made on what to wear, postcodes were gathered for the SatNav and then Cameron arrived and it was time to go. We all jumped in the car, headed around the corner to collect James and we were off, singing “we’re going to the zoo, zoo, zoo” as we went – Well, I was singing at least!<\/p>\n
Of course, within a few minutes of the journey the children were all of these things in various orders: bored, tired, hungry, thirsty, asking if we’re nearly there yet, starving and feeling sick. We played various games and the three of them chatted non-stop. They were mainly talking rubbish but they didn’t shut up once!<\/p>\n
Just over two hours later we arrived at the zoo, negotiated our way through the car parks and we were in. They weather was OK, overcast but at least it was dry. We made our way clockwise around the zoo and although we missed a few exhibits did manage to see most things. We stopped for lunch fairly soon so that Anna didn’t have to carry all of the food around all day. We stopped by the chimps which were one of the favourites, although the children also liked the mongoose. Anna liked the Visayan Warty Pigs and the Warthogs, although we only saw the latter from a distance. The bats went down well with everyone as well.<\/p>\n
As an ex-zookeeper I probably look at zoo’s with a slightly different eye to most people, but I did my best not to think of the behind the scenes things that I knew would be going on, so that instead I could just enjoy it as a visitor. The zoo itself is nice. Big enough to have a decent amount to see and plenty of space (within reason) for the animals. It was nice to see that where possible the\u00a0animals\u00a0were kept in big social groups and had plenty to do.<\/p>\n
They layout is a little confusing and it would be nice if they had some trails to follow so that you get to see everything without too much doubling back on yourself. There is also plenty of scope for improvements as far as information boards on the\u00a0animals\u00a0go and activities for the children. Just simple things like a ‘treasure hunt’ style activity where they have a sheet of questions to answer, where the answers can all be found somewhere in the zoo. Not only would this keep them occupied and give them something to do but it would be educational as well.<\/p>\n
We all enjoyed ourselves. Anna and I had fun and the three children did look at the animals but most of the time seem more interested in just chatting away amongst themselves. They did like watching the more active animals though such as the bats, the chimps and the Orang Utans.<\/p>\n
We stayed there until the zoo\u00a0was closing and then headed home with a stop at a TableTable restaurant in Oswestry for dinner. We had expected the three children to fall asleep in the car on the way home but no, they were wide awake and chatting nonsense for the entire journey. At time they weren’t even using proper words so we have no idea what they were doing. In the end Anna and I gave up and just let them get on with it. By the time we had dropped the children off and got home it was 10pm and the end of a very long day.<\/p>\n\n\t\t