Review: Lake District Wildlife Park

We've just come home from a sunny March week in the Lake District. Renting a cottage in Keswick with friends, we've had as relaxing a time as can be had in a house with 3 small children. One of the highlights of the week was our visit to the Lake District Wildlife Park.

Located about 10 minutes drive outside Keswick, the park has a beautiful setting - as you might expect from the Lake District, every direction gives a view of hills and mountains. On a sunny day, it's pretty spectacular:

We went with four adults and 3 children under 3, and found the park to be well laid out, and easy to get round with a pushchair and two small sets of legs. There is a wide range of animals, which adults and children alike enjoyed looking at: everything from tapirs to lemurs to otters to birds of prey to meerkats...reptiles, owls, a cockatoo who said hello, many varieties of monkeys, a zebra and more. They were well kept, in sizeable enclosures and all seemed healthy and happy (in distinct contrast to the animals we saw in an Italian zoo a few years ago). We got a bit snap happy, and here are some of our favourite pics and animals:

2 week old piglets

 

Golden eagle

There are many more - I was really struck by the variety of the animals and species there. We were there on a quiet weekday in early March, and were impressed that there was a half-hourly programme of activities, including hug-a-bunny (taken very seriously by my 2 year old):

We also saw the feeding of the meerkats - I won't share the photos of this one, but we were somewhat surprised to discover that meerkats weren't vegetarian, and in fact ripped into a bucket of (already dead) chicks with some gusto! I was glad that our kids weren't quite old enough to understand what was going on - I'd imagine parents of older children would have a bit of explaining to do!

The falconry display was impressive too - we missed the owls display, but enjoyed seeing various birds including Rupert the vulture flown. We took a lot of photos of empty space (they moved really quickly!) but managed to capture a couple:

I was particularly impressed by the knowledgeable way all of the staff talked about their animals and the affection they seemed to have for them.

In the event of rain there is a small indoor soft play area, where my daughter unfortunately found her favourite animal of the park:

However, I could imagine this being hideously heaving with children on a cold weekend day so it probably wouldn't keep you entertained for long.

Overall, it's a really nice place. We spent most of the day there, including a picnic lunch outside, and I'd thoroughly recommend it for attention to detail (for example, a safari jeep to play in whilst watching the zebra), interesting activities, and a huge variety of animals to look at. It was pretty reasonably priced for us (£8.95 per adult) as we didn't yet have to pay for our children - that kicks in from the 3rd birthday, at which point it's also £6.95 per child or £30 for a family of four. I still think it would be worth the money, especially if it is a nice day, and if you make the effort to go to all of the displays. 

One for the to-do list if you find yourself near Keswick with a spare sunny day on your hands!

Note: this is not a sponsored post, we paid for our own entry and my review is spontaneous as we had a great day there (and I wanted to show off our photos!!).