Birthday Weekend with Red Pandas

It was my birthday this weekend so as a treat my wife took me to Paradise Wildlife Park in Broxbourne Hertfordshire, I have never heard of this Zoo before so it was quite nice to go somewhere new.

The park itself is more than a zoo with lots to do aside from the Animals (Although the collection of exotic animals is worth the Admission alone.) along with the Animals there are two adventure play areas, a soft play gymboree and a water park, but the main event for us was the "Meet the Red Pandas" Experience which was my birthday treat.

I have always loved Red Pandas who I find are massively under appreciated and often over shadowed by the more popular Great Panda so the chance of actually going into the enclosure was a real highlight for me, the experience basically involved me feeding the Pandas by hand whilst the keeper did a talk to the public and then having a private talk with the Keeper whilst the Pandas ate from large bamboo branches. It was really amazing as I did not just get to hand feed the Pandas but also got to stroke one as it came to brush past me.

It all seemed to go very quickly and before I knew it I was back outside but it was still a great experience, Paradise Park seem to specialise in these kind of events with experiences available for most of the animals, as we were going around we saw people feeding the Tigers, Cheetahs and Zebras - but there were a lot more available

What I Did on My Holiday - Part 3 - Le Vallée des Singes

Le Vallée des Singes was our destination for the next days outing, this Valley of the Monkeys was actually a really good Zoo, I have been on a few occasions to Monkey World in Dorset and was expecting roughly the same kind of zoo, however the valley was much more open with monkeys running around very large enclosures you could walkthrough. Luckily there are park guides available in English so we could navigate around the slightly confusing 13 zone map.

There was also a petting zoo where my daughter had a good time looking at the various goats and chickens that ran around (Although she wanted picking up when a goat took a bit too much of an interest in her.)

Here is the website (in french)