| Product: |
Paignton Zoo |
| Date: |
26/08/01 (265 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Protection of species, Animals clean and well looked after
Disadvantages: Steep paths in places
If you are ever in the area of Paignton I would recommend a visit to Paignton Zoo. It is one the best zoos that I have ever had the pleasure to visit.
I intend to tell you about our day there, but I won’t go into details about every individual animal as this sort of information can be found on the website at www.paigntonzoo.org.uk. Instead I shall endeavour to give you a feel for the place by describing my own day there.
I had visited Paignton Zoo many years ago and had enjoyed my visit enormously so, while we were on holiday in Sidmouth last week, Dave took me for a return visit. He had never been before so was going on my recommendation.
The zoo is a little way inland from Paignton itself, which is on the couth coast of Devon in between Torquay and Brixham. Stagecoach buses run regularly from both Torquay and Paignton. It is also easy to find by car – just follow the brown tourist signs from the centre of Paignton. There is a large free car park just outside the entrance.
I will just say before I begin to tell you about the facilities and animals that Paignton Zoo is set on a hillside which means that some of the footpaths are a bit of a steep climb. Wheelchairs are available to borrow free of charge but booking for these is essential.
As we walked around we came across plenty of places to get snacks and drinks including a large restaurant with both indoor and outdoor seating. There were also plenty of toilets scattered about the zoo and all were well signposted. It is open from 10am until 6pm in the summer and from 10am until 5pm in the winter.
The entrance building is quite impressive housing the shop, information about the zoo, the payment counter and turnstiles. The admission costs were £7.20 for adults and £6.20 for students and OAP’s and £5.50 for children aged between 3 and 15 years old. Check the website or telephone the information line on 01803 697500 for up to date prices of discoun
ted family tickets etc.
We went from the entrance building across the disinfected mat put there as a precaution against the spread of foot and mouth disease. This made the disease suddenly very real for us ‘townies’.
Paignton Zoo is an Environmental Park dedicated to protecting some of our most endangered species, and it is certainly a far cry from how zoos used to be when I was young!
The zoo itself is split into six main areas – Savannah, Wetland, Dessert, Primley, Forest and Tropical Forest, so you get to see the various groups of animals in the company of the natural neighbours. To be fair, we sort of wandered around and saw what we wanted to in the order we wanted so this opinion will be a bit mixed up as regards those groupings.
Our first encounter with the residents of Paignton Zoo was somewhat unusual, well, we thought so anyway. We walked through the bird enclosure! At each end was a ‘door’ made of vertical pieces of heavy duty plastic so we could push our way through, but the birds would not be able to get out. It was fascinating to watch them flying about freely and there was plenty of information to tell you what they all were. If you’re a bit concerned about this, I will just say that they did not fly anywhere near to us.
Our next stop was the lions. I love all the big cats – they have always been my favourite animals. The zoo has a lion and a lioness both of whom were fast asleep having just been fed. They were in a lovely big enclosure and they looked very healthy and contented. I was a bit disappointed not to see them prowling around though!
We moved on to the Siberian Tigers, again the zoo has a pair of these. One was fast asleep in the sunshine and the other was walking round the enclosure. We stood first near to the fence and could see the tiger walking past, but then we moved down the side of the enclosure to stand next to the glass window to get a be
tter view. It was quite a feeling to stoop down as the tiger walked past and looked through the glass, so that I was literally face to face with him separated by a couple of millimetres of what I hoped was well reinforced glass!
I get a bit hazy about the order in which we visited the other animals so you’ll have to excuse me if I get it a bit wrong! If you go there yourself don’t be surprised if I have got two animals next to each other in my opinion who were nowhere near one another in the zoo!
Anyway back to the zoo – the elephants again had a huge enclosure, but I was quite surprised to find that the zoo has two elephants but one is African and the other is Indian. I would have expected them to have a pair of either one or the other type. By the way I could never remember which was which until my sister (aka Pagan) told me that one of the children in her class had told her this way of remembering. The Indian elephant has small ears like the size of India and the African elephant has large ears like the size of Africa. I have never forgotten since.
Next to the elephants was a pair of beautiful giraffes. I do think that these creatures are so majestic.
Opposite this was an enclosure containing zebra, and further down was a pair of white rhinos.
The next thing we saw was a family of bison, an adult pair and a baby. Now these were the only animals in the zoo that looked unkempt and scruffy, but I challenge anyone to tell me that they have seen a tidy looking bison! All the other animals in the zoo looked well cared for and happy in their lovely surroundings.
The gorillas were inside a huge gorilla house while their enclosure was being cleaned, and re -landscaped. They had climbing nets, ropes on which to swing and plenty of food and drink so they all seemed quite happy indoors. Notices around the place requested that no flash photography be used as it disturbed the gorillas. Let’s face it
– we do not want a disturbed gorilla do we?
The penguins were all outside but were sheltering from the sun under the trees in their enclosure. We tried to tell them that they’d be much cooler in the water but they weren’t having any of it!
My absolute favourites of the day were the two cheetahs. As we arrived at their enclosure they were both asleep, but as we stood watching them they woke up and one began pacing around. They are such graceful animals with beautiful markings on their faces. I could have stood there all day watching them. On the way out Dave bought me a small cheetah to sit on the shelf in the car! Not a real one you understand!
There was a nocturnal house, which housed bats and sloths (in separate glass fronted cages). There was very little light in here, but it was easy enough to see everything once your eyes had adjusted. The bats were much larger than I expected, as they were fruit bats and I had only ever seen the little ones that fly about at dusk before, but it was great to see them flying around. The thing that made me angry in here was the fact that the sign outside said no flash photography and no noise so as not to disturb the animals, and children were shouting to one another with no word of rebuke from the parents.
Another house to walk through was the ‘Rain Forest’. This again had birds flying freely and we stood watching them building their nests. The lizards, snakes etc were all safely inside glass cages – except for one small lizard sitting happily on the top of the cage – how he had escaped we didn’t know. We just hoped that the snakes didn’t know the same escape route!
From the ‘Rain Forest’ we walked into the ‘Desert’ to see the animals and birds native to this area of the world. Again they were housed in glass fronted cages, with extra precautions where the inhabitant of the cage was particularly poisonous!
The only area of the zoo that we did not visit was the Primley area, which contained more birds and reptiles together with the kangaroos, and small monkeys. Neither of us was particularly interested in any of those so we decided to give that area a miss.
We visited the shop on the way out, which sells a wide range of souvenirs including ties, tee shirts, books, stuffed toys (as mentioned above!), toys, ornaments, postcards etc to name but a few! They accept all major credit and debit cards too.
Well, that’s an account of our time at Paignton Zoo. We both really enjoyed our visit and would heartily recommend it to anyone thinking about going.
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