I hadn’t even heard of Whipsnade before this weekend (or before we started planning to go this weekend) but I’m always open to going to see some cute wild animals. Whipsnade is located in Dunstable, Bedfordshire. Yea – exactly. It is a mammoth journey to get out there and I would well recommend actually have a car available. We took the public transport route – catching the train from Kings Cross Thameslink to Luton Airport Parkway only to find out that trying to catch a bus out to the Park would take practically an hour an a half, eating up valuable animal watching time! Actually we had initially planned on catching a taxi but when S and I arrived at the station there was no taxi in sight. Just as well one finally turned up (and A made sure he grabbed a card to call a taxi for when we later left the park.) It will cost around £18 one-way to get the taxi to the Park from Luton Airport Parkway so its definitely not a cheap 10-mile journey.

Okay well I’ve spent quite some time chatting about how hard Whipsnade is to get to so I think its best to move on and talk about the park. As I stated earlier having a car is a pretty good idea because not only is it handy in getting to the park you can also actually take your car INSIDE the park and drive around certain areas. In fact there are some areas which can only be reached by car so all around its handy to have one. Alternatively if you don’t have a car you can catch the Jumbo Express (a short steam train ride with tour guide that costs £3 for adults.) It doesn’t go around the entire park but does take you through the Elephants, Camels, Yaks, some Deer, the Greater one-horned Rhino and Przewalski’s horses (the only TRUE wild horses in the world.) There is also a free Safari Bus but we didn’t ride it so I’m not sure where it takes you.

The park is very walkable. S and A are convinced that we walked more than the approximately 10,000 steps I’d logged on my pedometer but I’m fairly sure we did a lot of standing around rather than walking. Many of the animal enclosures are also fairly massive but we didn’t actually have to walk around them to see all the animals.

The following are the animals which were easily the most entertaining: Eurasian Brown Bears, Rosy Flamingos (gorgeous bright rosy orange colour), Giraffe, Hippos (though they were being rather lazy when we saw them), Penguins (go visit them for their great view over the valley), the Rhinos, Sealions (definitely see the show) and the amazing Tigers (easily better than the one male and female African lions.) The Children’s farm is also great if you want to get up close and personal to some donkeys, goats, pigs and lama.

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed my day at the park with one of the highlights being catching the Brown Bears playing with each other late in the afternoon. If you go make sure to get your transportation to the Park right and make sure to get there in plenty of time to catch the feedings/shows which guarantee that the animals are awake and moving around and, unless you don’t mind getting soaked, don’t get too close to the sealioins at the sealion show. You’ll see what I mean.

But, here is an animal that you won’t see in the park: