With the school year in full swing life has been crazily busy with the return of clubs and classes, Even the weekends have been jam packed with birthday parties and other engagements leaving us a little lacking in wild time. Boo!

Last weekend finally gave us a free day to get out and about and with one of the children keen to experience a safari park as part of their birthday celebrations we headed off to Woburn safari park.

On the whole I’m a little uncomfortable with animals living in captivity and there are some zoos I simply refuse to visit. However until the human race can all treat wild animals and more importantly their habitats with the respect they deserve I question wether living in a protected environment can be so bad. Therefore we only visit places with a strong ethos of conservation and where animal welfare is paramount.

We used our club card vouchers which we converted to entrance tickets for all five of us, so what would have been a very costly trip was effectively free for us. Hurrah!

As soon as you enter the grounds you are right in the thick of the action, you pay for entry from your car and then it’s straight into the animal fields. You can access as much or as little of the safari route as you wish following trails through the Savannah, lion park and the African forest.
If you don’t fancy carnivore valley and your car is a soft top making you effectively a lunchbox on wheels then you follow bypass routes.

We followed the whole trail and spotted easily all of the animals even though they have some large habitats with plenty of hidey places. Driving through does require some patience as securing the best viewing spot seems to bring out the worst in people, jostling for position in their cars. One can only imagine what these majestic beasts make of such animalistic behaviour! 😉

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I was at one point shocked to see in Carnivore valley a toddler sat on his mother’s lap in the front seat, window wide open, trying to feed the animals. Wow! You may as well just go ahead and marinate that child! I’m also doubtful that Pringles are part of a carnivorous diet!
In that respect I feel Rangers could supervise the humans at times rather than the the animals!

The highlight for the trip for the children was the Monkeys jumping all over the car, we still have clear monkey hand prints on our slightly grubby car, which is very sweet!

Once we had completed the car route we parked up for the foot safari, we took a picnic and ate beside the elephant meadow with a hilarious encounter of an elephant emptying it’s bladder nearby, boy can those girls go! 😉

There’s still quite a bit to do on foot, with a few walk through enclosures. These felt a little intrusive for the animals at times and I was horrified to find a large pin on the floor – no doubt dropped by accident by a visitor but I can only imagine the consequences if discovered by one of the wallabies. Needless to say I picked it up and disposed of it.
On top of these few enclosures there is a soft play area, play park, swan boats and train rides all included for your entrance fee. There are also a few activities such as Go Ape which do cost extra.
You can also access the safari route as many times as you wish. We did another lap before we left but it was quite clear at this stage that the animals were all a bit worn out, the monkeys were no longer jumping on cars and the giraffes were taken to bed. A hard day at the office so to speak.