National Seal Sanctuary, Gweek

The Sanctuary was started in 1958 by Ken Jones when a baby seal, only a few hours old, was washed up on the beach at St Agnes. For many years it was based in St Agnes but as news of it's good work spread the amount of animals it received increased and in 1975 it re-located to Geek.

Today the Sanctuary has Nursery pools, Convalescence, and Resident pools, and a specially designed Hospital. The hospital over the years has been extended to include isolation pools, as well as treatment and preparation areas.

They have rescued many seals over the years, and most are well enough to be released back into the wild after treatment, but some seals, for various reasons, would not survive back in the wild, so they have them as their guests at the Sanctuary.

In addition to the Grey and Common Seals, they have Californian and Patagonian Sea Lions. The Sanctuary also provides a much-needed haven for a variety of other animals, such as Otters, Ponies and Goats. Occasionally the Sanctuary's facilities and expertise are called upon to aid in the rescue of other marine creatures such as Dolphins and Turtles.

I know you could have got that information from their web site, in fact that's where I got it, but I feel a bit of background information on the sanctuary was required. This is not a place to go if you want to see performing animals, it is a sanctuary and as such the animals in it's care are treated with love and respect.

There are regular feeds during which the guide (feeder) will take you around each of the pools and give you information on not only the type of seal they are feeding but the history and characters of the seals in the pools, how they came to the sanctuary, why they have remained and personality traits. You can tell just by listening to the guides how much they care and respect these animals. Rocky, an adult Californian sea lion, is a particular favourite of ours, he is blind but that in no way hampers his enjoyment of life, he is full of fun and quite a mischievous animal.

We make a point of visiting the sanctuary every time we go to Cornwall, to see how the seals are getting on. We have recently taken our 4 year old nephew and he loved it.

There is a short walk to the seal area up a quite steep hill, but for those of you who can not manage the walk there is a regular Safari Bus. At the top of the hill the first thing you will find is the hospital, there is a viewing area so you can see some of the seals convalescing but this depends on the time of year you make your trip a couple of times we have been pleased to see the hospital empty.

After the hospital you move over to the seal pools, they are quite spacious and the seals seem content with their environment, at the back of the pools is a snack hut where you can sit and have a relaxing cup of tea and sandwiches whilst waiting for the next feed, please note I think it should be made a criminal offence to visit the sanctuary and not witness one of the feeding sessions.

After that we usually wander into the woods at the back of the pools and visit the otters for their feed, which takes place shortly after the seal feed, and get told information on otters in general and the history of the ones at the sanctuary.

On the whole the sanctuary is excellent value at £10.50 for adults and £6.95 for children you can quite easily spend a whole day there watching the animals and relaxing, I would advise you make sure the hand break on you car (assuming you drive to the sanctuary) is working as the car park is on a very steep hill.

Whilst I'm at it I would also recomment a vist to their web site, where they have more information about the sanctury and photos & history of their current residents.

http://www.sealsanctuary.co.uk/corn1.htm​l

Enjoy your trip, we always do.