Zoodoku! (Edinburgh Zoo)

Name: collingwood21

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Product:	Edinburgh Zoo
Date:	28/09/06 (771 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Reasonable prices, Well designed enclosures, Emphasis on education and conservation

Disadvantages: The car park, The cafe

Before we get started, here is a quick question for you:

When you think of visitor attractions in Edinburgh, what springs to mind?

My first response to that was the castle, followed by the Royal Mile, Holyrood House and the National Museum of Scotland. The shopping is pretty good, too. So it came as a bit of surprise to me to learn that Edinburgh Zoo is the second most popular paid for tourist attraction, not just in Edinburgh, but in the whole of Scotland, with a massive 650,000 visitors a year. (First place, incidentally, goes to my initial answer, the castle). I had a vague awareness that Edinburgh had a zoo, but it wasn’t until very recently that a free day, sunny weather and the desire to “do something” coincided and inspired me to want to make the five hour round trip to see what it was that attracted so many visitors in a city that has very great number of things competing to part them from their money.

The zoo (formerly the Scottish National Zoological Park) is in the Corstophine area of Edinburgh, not far from Murrayfield Stadium. Driving in cities I am unfamiliar with unnerves me at the best of times, but navigating to the zoo was surprisingly painless, as it is well signposted from the Edinburgh by-pass by large brown signs. Once off the bypass you only have to drive a couple of miles down the A8 before reaching the zoo itself, so you don’t actually need to do much city driving at all. The A8 forms part of the Edinburgh-Glasgow route, so expect it to be pretty well clogged with traffic whenever you go (although to be honest I found this to be no bad thing, as it allowed me to proceed slowly and keep an eye out for the turning into the zoo – which you actually come across quite suddenly; I hereby apologise to whoever was driving behind me when I suddenly swerved to my left, realising I was sailing past the very thing I had been looking for). I would recommend that you have a look at the zoo website before you go (www.edinburghzoo.org.uk/PageAccess.aspx?id=5) as you can download nice clear directions, which I found very helpful in guiding me to this point.

Anyone who has been to Edinburgh will surely remember how hilly it is. Approaching the zoo from the A8, everything is deceptively flat – it is not until you enter the car park that you suddenly realise that the “sloping parkland” alluded to on the website is code for the zoo being built up one of those (very steep) hills. Anyone planning on driving to it better practice their hill starts before they go, as you have to stop part way up the slope to pay a £2 parking charge (which the literature was curiously subdued about, incidentally). I had a very hairy moment at this point, when the driver in front of me rolled back when trying to hill start…and just missed my car by inches. The car park itself is far from brilliant. Sharing the available space with a large hotel means that the car park gets very busy and (as I later found out) often gets full. They have tried to compensate for this by squeezing spaces into every corner and making some of them rather narrow, so do be careful if you drive a big car, and try to get there early. We arrived at noon on a Saturday outside of the main tourist season, and at that point around 80% of the spaces were taken.


**A Little Bit Of History**
The Royal Zoological Society of Scotland was founded in 1909 by lawyer Thomas Gillespie. An enthusiast of zoology, in just four years, Gillespie managed to garner sufficient support for the society to purchase land to the west of Edinburgh with the help of the town council for the then huge sum of £17,000. The 85 acres of parkland they bought was the old estate around Corstophine Hill House, which still stands at the centre of the zoo today. Gillespie was strongly inspired by the “open zoo” design of Hamburg Zoo, and used this as a model for creating his institution rather than the tiny cages favoured by other Victorian menageries. He designed Edinburgh Zoo to have large, open enclosures with visitors separated from the animals by ditches and moats rather than bars; indeed, the original layout of the site was actually done by social visionary town planner Patrick Geddes rather than a zoologist. Some of the first animals to move into the new zoo were the king penguins, donated to the zoo from a whaling expedition that docked in Leith in 1914. The penguin collection remains one of the best-known parts of the zoo today.


Reaching the entrance to the zoo, I saw with dismay that a crowd had formed outside the door and down the steps. However, I was pleased to find that the zoo had plenty of capable visitor services staff on hand to guide the crowds into the correct queues inside, and it only took a matter of minutes before we were in our designated queue, being handed a clipboard and asked for our details. The reason for this is because the zoo can exploit its status as a charity to reclaim the VAT paid on entrance fees by UK taxpayers, so your money ends up wholly with the zoo rather than a portion going to the treasury. Working in museums I was familiar with this procedure, but I had never seen it applied with such a ruthless efficiency before. Entrance to the zoo was not unreasonably priced, but does currently include an extra 10% to help fund a conservation project the zoo is involved in, protecting chimps in Africa. Should you decide that you don’t wish to pay the extra 10%, then you can ask the cashier to remove it from your entrance fee. Along with your tickets, you will be given a map of the zoo, which is very useful to hang on to, as the site is extensive.

There are two ways of getting around the zoo – on foot, or by hopping on the free hilltop safari ride. The hilltop safari is a jeep with a trailer that has room for up to 20 visitors, including 3 wheelchairs spaces, and sets off from outside the entrance hall on a regular basis, driving you to the top of the hill (and back down again if you wish) with a running commentary on the animals you are passing. This is great news for anyone who might struggle to make it up the very steep hill that the zoo is built on, but we elected to explore on foot to allow us to do things at our own pace and order, so I cannot comment on how good this service is.


**The Controversy of Zoos**
I couldn’t very well write this review without touching on the issue of why we still have zoos. Having visited many zoos, I have experienced institutions where conservation and education are given the highest of priorities (such as at Chester Zoo) and others where the conditions of the animals leaving you feeling quick sick (London Zoo – although I sincerely hope it has improved since my childhood visit). On one side of the debate is the issue that many animals appear restricted in zoos and are unable to behave in the ways they would in nature; the very worst zoos keep animals in tiny concrete and metal enclosures, and serve as nothing more than entertainment for visitors. However, there is also an argument that many endangered species would be a good deal more endangered (if not extinct) if it were not for captive breeding and conservation programmes run by zoos. I have also heard it said that we are no more free than the animals, as we are compelled to work for someone five days a week, making us a prisoner of sorts as well.

Whatever your own opinion – and I cannot go into the detail of this debate within this review – I can say that Edinburgh Zoo has won awards for its design and is considered at the forefront of providing animals with stimulating environments. It has even given up the elephants it once had to the more appropriate environment of safari parks in acknowledgement that they weren’t getting the best living space in the zoo. Some of the enclosures I saw were amongst the largest and best designed I had seen in all the zoos I have visited, and the zoo is heavily involved in breeding and conservation programmes. While entertainment is certainly a part of the draw for visitors, there is a strong emphasis on education and this is one zoo that I felt no discomfort in visiting. Indeed, after seeing the otters sunbathing en masse it was hard to believe that they were anything but the most content otters in the world!


It would take too long here for me to describe all of the animals that you can see in the zoo, but I will mention what were the highlights for me during my visit. One of the animals that I was very keen to see was the red panda, a shy creature that is rarely seen in the wild as it spends much of its time camouflaged up trees – which is exactly how it behaves in the zoo! The first time I walked past the red panda enclosure I could see nothing but a small snatch of red fur as it dozed in the very top of tree, but on my return I was very lucky to see one coming down to feed. The red panda is rather different from the giant panda that most people are familiar with; while it shares that same diet of bamboo, it is much smaller and actually looks more like a red racoon than anything you would immediately recognise as a panda. Also special for me were the Asiatic lion cubs born in May 2006, and the koalas, as Edinburgh Zoo have the only koalas in the UK. I would have loved to see some meerkats and lemurs, but unfortunately they didn’t feel the same about seeing me, and stayed well hidden during my visit. I did manage to hike to the top of the hill, and was duly rewarded with a wonderful view down over Edinburgh. Another excellent point was that the zoo has a number of information booths, staffed by volunteers from what I could see, stationed at various places around the site that allow you to get a bit of hands-on activity. I saw one demonstration by the lion enclosure, and managed to get a bit closer to the booth by the rhinos, where you could handle rhino horns and learn more about the rhinos and their behaviour. The booths were not open all day when I visited so it is a bit hit and miss whether you will catch one, but are well worth a look if they are open.

In terms of visitor facilities, Edinburgh Zoo is well stocked with play areas, kiosks, picnic areas and eateries. At the poshest end of the scale is mansion house (formerly Corstophine Hill House), which offers a waitress service restaurant, but this was a little beyond my means and at lunchtime I headed for one of the cafés. The café was reasonably priced, but the food on offer made it feel like a school canteen pre Jamie Oliver, and the tables weren’t being cleared very well, leaving it a bit messy and chaotic. The menu was the usual array of burgers, chips, hotdogs and pizzas, and while they advertised healthy options in the form of baked potatoes and pasta, these had all gone by the time I got there. We ended up buying a burger and chips each with two bottles of juice (virtually all they had left), which came to £11.90. It was an adequate meal, but I would have preferred something lighter and a bit less greasy. The kiosks, in all fairness, offered fruit for sale alongside the drinks and “Cornetto’s” (sic) though. Toilets were plentiful and clean, and the gift shop (situated in the entrance hall) was huge but very much child-orientated. Parents should prepare themselves for a barrage of requests from their children, while adults should be prepared to not find a single grown-up souvenir of your visit.


**Concluding Comments**
The overriding impression I got from visiting Edinburgh Zoo is that it cares about the animals a lot – but less so about the visitors! The zoo does have a master plan to completely redevelop the site over the next 20 though, and that will include improved facilities for both animals (larger, state of the art enclosures) and visitors (a transport system around the site and new restaurants). The zoo is well worth a visit as an inspiring and educational day out for all ages…but do take a packed lunch with you.

Highly recommended. I want to give them 5 stars, but I am knocking one off for the food and car park.


**Visiting Details**
Opening Times – The zoo is open from 9am daily, including Christmas Day. It shuts at 6pm (April-September) or 5pm (October and March) or 4.30pm (November to February).

Entrance Price (including current 10% voluntary donation to the Budongo Project):
Adults - £10
Concession - £7.50
Child 3 to 14 years - £7
Child under 3 – Free
Family (2 adults, 2 children) - £32
Family (2 adults, 3 children) - £35.50

Visitors with Disabilities: See www.edinburghzoo.org.uk/PageAccess.aspx?id=10

www .edinburghzoo.org.uk

Summary: A stimulating day out for adults and kids.