Bristol Zoo and Gardens

...read the other reviews of Bristol Zoo Gardens before we went, and found them to be very useful. They are written by members of the zoo, who live nearby and visit frequently having done so for many years. I thought it might be useful to get a view from someone visiting for the first time.

I think one of the best things about zoos is the feeling of wonder, sometimes coupled with nostalgia, that you get when you visit. This is the impression ...
...fellow volunteers. I knew that Bristol Zoo would be very different from what I was used to and that I would have to find my way around it in the same way as any other first time visitor, but I still hoped that it would bring back that feeling of excitement and adventure that I still feel every time I set foot in that little corner of Regent's Park. Was I expecting too much? Let's see.

***** The day of our visit: *****

... more

***** Introduction *****

I read the other reviews of Bristol Zoo Gardens before we went, and found them to be very useful. They are written by members of the zoo, who live nearby and visit frequently having done so for many years. I thought it might be useful to get a view from someone visiting for the first time.

I think one of the best things about zoos is the feeling of wonder, sometimes coupled with nostalgia, that you get when you visit. This is the impression I got, from reading the other reviews, of how the other reviewers felt when they went to their zoo. I know this feeling well as I was brought up in North London and regularly visited London Zoo all through my childhood. I eventually became a volunteer there and even went to study zoology at University thanks to a bit of pushing from my fellow volunteers. I knew that Bristol Zoo would be very different from what I was used to and that I would have to find my way around it in the same way as any other first time visitor, but I still hoped that it would bring back that feeling of excitement and adventure that I still feel every time I set foot in that little corner of Regent's Park. Was I expecting too much? Let's see.

***** The day of our visit: *****

March the 14th, 2008, the weather was traditionally British: cloudy and drizzly all day, not a hint of sun peeking through but not rainy enough to get soaked. Pretty good zoo weather, in fact.

It took us about 45 minutes to drive from our house to the zoo, so we made sure that we had everything prepared before we went. This meant that we left much later than intended. We found the zoo relatively easily, only going wrong once, as it is signed from the motorway with the traditional elephant brown sign (oh when will they change that? Don't they know hardly any zoos actually have elephants these days and it is terribly disappointing for little children?). Our wrong turn happened because my husband would not believe that that crazy left hand turn up the hill could possibly be legal and that the sign must mean left further on. So we had to turn around and make the turn as a right instead. Once we arrived at the zoo we were directed to a car park - a sign informing us which car park was open and which was shut. Now I knew that there would be a £1 car parking charge, but what I didn't know was that we would pay it as soon as we went into the car park, to the attendant standing patiently in the rain. This was my first issue with the information I had gathered before my visit, that had I not had a pound coin handy we could have been scrabbling around in the car for a good while, holding things up. However the car park is very conveniently situated, well attended and has a number of disabled spaces very close to the zoo entrance.

Having got all our paraphernalia out of the car, put it in the buggy and strapped it in, or jammed it underneath we walked the short distance to the entrance. There are two entrances, one for members and one for day visitors, there was no queue for either and two counters were ready for buying tickets. We filled in the Gift Aid form and enquired about membership then we paid and went in. On the day we visited we paid £11.50 each for two adults and our under three got in free. You can choose not to give the voluntary donation to the zoo and pay only £10.44 for and adult. The other entry fees are:
Children between 3 and 14 get in for £6.59 without donation and £7.25 with
Concessions: (15-18 year olds, students,senior citizens and disabled adults) are £9.08 and £10.00
Disabled children get in for £5.18 or £5.70
Carers for disabled adults (if required) get in free.

You can also get a family ticket which gets in two adults and two children for £34 (£30.98 without voluntary donation) which is a saving of £3.50 over the individual ticket prices. There are also group rates for people paying in groups of ten or more. These can be found on the zoos website - which I would recommend you check before you visit as these prices will no doubt be out of date very soon.

The voluntary donation contributes, at the moment, towards the primate conservation projects which the zoo is involved with. This means the money goes both to projects abroad and to maintaining captive populations for conservation purposes. This is a common fund raising practice for zoos.

This may seem pretty expensive, and it probably is, but it is the going rate for zoo, it is significantly cheaper than London Zoo and there are many deals to be had if you plan your day in advance. Bristol Zoo, unfortunately, does not participate in Tesco Clubcard deals, so you can't get a cheap ticket that way.

***** What's in the Zoo? *****

Right, we made it through the gate. But where did we end up? Well, we are standing in the middle of an open courtyard areas, with the shop behind us, enclosures in front and on the left and a wheelchair shed on the right with a few wheelchairs getting drenched in the rain outside it. We've got some tickets, receipts and a leaflet about membership. We do not have a map.

We try the first enclosure opposite us. It is the flamingo enclosure. It contains some avocets and some ducks and a gardener returfing it. No flamingos.

Then we find a map. There are actually maps dotted all over the zoo, and sign posts, most of which are not fallen over. I will try to describe what we saw and how we saw it roughly in order.

-----Asiatic Lions
Part of the European breeding program, this pair of lions, like most cats, like nothing better than lounging around. Which is what we found them doing. We could see them very well through the glass wall but the visibility from small person height was very poor. The lions have a good sized enclosure, and there were some dramatic looking paw marks on the glass a bit further down than where we were looking.

-----Twilight World
As you would expect, the twilight world is dark and contains nocturnal animals. We saw some eel-looking fish and a bundle of naked mole rat babies. We couldn't find the two toed sloth or the lorises, but we caught glimpses of sugar gliders and a large rat thing. The darkness in this building makes it difficult to move around, and that isn't helped by the uneven floor. There are some light ropes along the floor at one point, but they don't light the way very well and they make the reflection on the glass worse, so it's harder to see what's in the enclosures. This house probably isn't very wheelchair friendly, it isn't enormously walker friendly as I saw (or heard) two people walk into litter bins while I was there. The twilight world then mysteriously becomes an exhibit of household animals, by which I mean spiders, pet fish and rats. I didn't really understand the logic behind this bit, but it is easy for little ones to see.

-----Fruit Bats
After the twilight world come the fruit bats. This is a walkthrough enclosure and you are advised not to stand directly under the bats. However, the bats were sensibly inside hiding from the rain.

-----Reptile House
The reptile house is small and disappointing.

-----Aquarium
The aquarium is small and wonderful. There are a small number of very large tanks with a wide range of fish. There are the obligatory Nemos (clown fish) and Dorys (regal tangs), but there are also bizarre-nosed paddle fish, refraction-beating archer fish and a fantastic tunnel under a tank with some huge fish. Our daughter was enthralled by the whole exhibit.

-----Bug World
By the time we got to the bug world, the little one was starting to get a bit fractious so we didn't explore it as fully as we might have. The bug world is divided rather sensibly into forest, ocean and desert and possibly something else sections.

-----Pelican Restaurant
This is the obligatory ridiculously named zoo restaurant. It is gloomy and a bit grim inside and is staffed by an extremely sullen bunch of people. Outside there is a white tent for picnicking. This is also where the two toilets that we managed to find are, one at each end of the restaurant. One side has baby changing facilities, but only a single pull down table in the women's and the men's toilets. There may well be more toilets around the zoo, but we failed to find them.

-----Monkey Jungle
The monkey enclosure is relatively new, built in 2006, and is in stark contrast to the older part of the zoo that we had just visited. It is a reminder of how zoos struggle for funding, and how they are generally doing what they can to improve themselves, bit by bit. We saw De Brazza's monkeys, various lemurs and macaques, all hiding from the rain and having their lunch inside. This is the first time that we encountered some visitor orientated staff who told us that we were welcome to go through the lemur walkthrough, but that there were no lemurs in it, as they were all inside.

-----Seal and Penguin Coasts
This was the highlight of the zoo for us. You start off above ground and follow a coast type path, and then onto the deck of a pretend ship. You start off on the penguin side and work your way around to the fur seal side. All around the top is an aviary with marine birds darting around. The penguins I could take or leave, but the fur seals were wonderful to watch. From above the water we watched them surfacing and turning somersaults but following the path round we wound our way down to underneath the tank, where you can watch the seals swimming under the water through various windows and even another tunnel. One female repeatedly swam up to the window we were next to and checked who we were. Needless to say the little one was joyous at this and hooted with delight. We even managed to see two penguins swimming, although their pool did seem a little deserted.

----- Eye Photographs
There was a little exhibit of photographs of animal eyes. They are wonderful.

----- Zona Brazil
This is a weird sort of mish-mash of enclosures with the Tapirs at the centre of it. It also has some capybaras. There are some tamarins at each end. This area represents a region which is world famous for its diversity, but the exhibit falls flat in my opinion.

----- Gorillas and Okapi
We wound our way backwards to find the Gorillas eating their lunch and the Okapi having their medicine - one of them seemed to have some sort of infection. Unlike most zoo visitors, I am not that interested in primates, but being able to look at a velvety okapi close up gives me a warm feeling inside. They are one of those animals that no one seems to make a good soft toy of, along with elephant shrews and collembola. This is a beautiful new enclosure with excellent views of the animals indoors and large outdoor enclosures to go with it.

----- Wallace Aviary
The zoos website describes this as "a huge open-air structure designed so that visitors can stroll among exotic plants to view free-flying birds from the Philippines and Indonesia." Actually, it seemed to be a small building and small open area with rather a lot of pigeons, of various types, in it. It was quite nice to walk past the Victoria Crowned pigeon on the path,

----- The Lake
The lake has on it and around it some lemurs and monkeys. We saw the squirrel monkeys on their island and some Alaotran gentle lemurs were hiding around a corner behind a trailer full of tools and wires. We also saw one river otter eating its lunch and a few meerkats.

----- Red Pandas
Because we went through the twilight world, we missed these the first time round. But we like red pandas, this one was high in a tree, which is their usual place.

----- Langurs
On the way back to the shop we also saw these, having missed them on the way in because they are tucked away in the corner. They were nice and orange. I'm afraid I can't remember which ones they were, and the website is refusing to tell me (I've found it they're Javan Langurs).

----- The Shop
The shop has a standard collection of souvenir things. There are a lot of toys - there is a whole room of soft toys - so if you are taking children, be prepared to buy something or endure a tantrum. I bought a rather nice badge for 50p.

***** General Comments *****

+ Bristol Zoo is a member of BIAZA (British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums), EAZA (European Association of Zoos and Aquariums), WAZA (World Association of Zoos and Aquariums) and IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature). That means that it is not just a place to entertain your kids - and you - but a serious scientific institution doing actual conservation work and also very important education work. So that means you should feel good about yourself just for turning up, because your money at the gate is helping to continue the important work that the zoo does.

+ Inner city zoos have the particular problem of no expansion space and increasing knowledge of appropriate conditions for keeping animals. Therefore any good zoo with such little space has to think very carefully about which animals they have space to house. This means that Rhinos, Elephants and Giraffes do not live at Bristol. But you shouldn't be disappointed, believe it or not, bigger is not always better. In fact, one of the most exciting animals in the zoo, scientifically speaking, and one of the most interesting conservation projects, is probably one you wouldn't even notice - the partula snail.

+ Signage. This is a bit of a constant irritation for me. At London Zoo we used to have gloriously informative signs with maps and species information and then someone decided they weren't exciting enough to look at and made them all bold and colourful, but almost totally devoid of information. I don't know for certain, but it seems to me that this same thing has happened at Bristol. There are A4 signs identifying each animal, their Latin name and then one or two sentences about them. It is true that I am a Zoologist, but I don't think that I am the only person that would like the option of learning a bit more than one piece of trivia about the animals they find interesting. For example, in the reptile house I stopped to look at the Geoffroy's side-necked turtle. That's an interesting name, I thought, I wonder why it is called that? Well, the sign provided me with no information, but having looked them up online, not only is it easy to find out - "Side-necked turtles are so called because of their habit of withdrawing their head and neck into the shell sideways for protection against predators such as caiman and jaguars" - but that is quoted from Bristol Zoo's own website, which is the first hit on google when I looked up side-necked turtle.

+ Bristol Zoo was awarded "Zoo of the Year 2004" by the Good Britain Guide. I would say that this is probably when a lot of the things we saw were brand new, for example the Zoolympics displays, which are at various points around the zoo. They consist of boards mostly, where you can compare your abilities to animals. You can test your reaction times, running speed, see how long your tongue is, things like this. But all the boards are looking a bit worse for wear and the information is not massively clear. They are a bit of fun, and it would be so easy to make the educational aspect of it a bit less wordy and complicated.

+ Whenever you visit a zoo off season, you can expect to find some refurbishments going on. When we were there the Rose Garden was being dug up, and the area in front of the Clifton Pavilion was all covered in building works.

+ We didn't go and see the animal encounter shows, so I won't comment on them, but I will say that other than keepers, we hardly saw any visitor orientated staff. Only those I mention in the lemur walk-through. I'm not sure if it was bad timing, or just that we didn't visit the areas populated by volunteers or staff, but I really felt that a greater staff or volunteer presence would have added to our experience.

***** In Conclusion *****

Bristol Zoo is a lovely little zoo which has undergone some really excellent improvement. It is the sort of place that would be great to get to know, and go to once a fortnight to see your favourite animals, to see zoo new babies, to watch them grow and to learn about biodiversity and conservation. But I don't think that I will be going back in a hurry. 45 minutes is too far away from us to warrant making this a regular stop on our family outing schedule. This is probably partly because this is not my childhood zoo - so I don't have the memories to go with my current experience - but it is also just because it is too small a place to occupy an entire day out, which for us it has to be.

I would certainly recommend visiting the zoo if you live in or around Bristol, or if you are visiting the city, this would definitely make a good addition to your itinerary, but if you live further away, there may be better, larger, zoos and safari parks within the same distance.

***** I have realised that I have not mentioned the Gardens at all, except noting that the rose garden was closed. I think this is because I didn't feel that they merited a separate place in the title, they seemed incidental. But I am not a plant person... 

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