Just returned from a 3 day trip to both North Wales and the Lake District to visit some of the last zoo's in the Country I have yet to visit...
Crossing the Menai Suspension Bridge designed by Thomas Telford and completed in 1826, I started my journey at Pili Palas (which means 'Butterfly' in Welsh) Nature Park on the Island of Anglesey. Here, 3/4 of the inhabitants speak Welsh, which was very evident as soon as I entered the zoo, sharing it as I did with a school of fast-talking Welsh-speaking children who happened to be there at the same time. I felt quite unique, almost exotic in fact-being probably the only one there who spoke English as a first language. Maybe, I should have been in one of the enclosures!
After spending just over an hour at Pili Palas Nature World, I then travelled to the much larger Welsh Mountain Zoo in Colwyn Bay, before heading off to my final zoo which was the South Lakes Wildlife Park in the Lake District, which I visited the next day. It was in the news last year because of the tragic death of of Sarah McClay-a young Scottish zookeeper who was horrifically mauled by one its big cats.
Out of the three zoos, for me, the South Lakes was by far the best one-at least as far as photography is concerned, because it offered such a different perspective. Combined with a number of unique walk throughs, that allowed you to get really close to certain animals that you couldn't in any other zoo, (such as the impossibly photogenic Prairy Dog's and a very comical Black Capped Crane), it also offered extensive, overhead walkways for an alternative viewpoint.
