"Would you like to go to the zoo? "asks Queene Mab.
Well who wouldn't
Well before long we were queuing outside the zoo's entrance as the turnstile staff failed miserably to cope with the number of people who had the same idea. I guess this is because at £15.50 a pop hardly any family group is going to pay cash and then you get the "would you like to make a voluntary donation?" (what on top of £15.50 are you joking?) question and then "would you like to gift aid your entrance fee?" Ordinarily I'd say yes to the gift aid, but had by the time we got to the turnstile (about 30 - 45 minutes) lost the will to live.
Still I hadn't been to London Zoo for ages, so I was delighted to see haw much better it has got since we last took the Moff there.
First up was the Gorilla Kingdom and it was great to see the large paddock the gorillas have got where they have plenty of room to either interact with or get away from each other.
Next up was lunch and we had a jolly nice piri piri chicken wrap (£4.95) from a kiosk that was in my opinion rather insensitively selling roast pork baguettes next door to the old Elephant House which is now home to family of wild pigs!
From there we wandered on to the big cats who were of course all asleep in the Sun and then to the woolly monkey enclosure which is another of these walk through enclosures where you can get right up close to the little critters.
Biodiversity Underpinning Global Survival is the new name for the exhibit that was the Web of Life, and handily also spells Bugs, you can meet lots of creepy crawlies in this exhibit which also houses a few more advanced life forms and explains why biodiversity and conservation are so important in an easy to understand but non patronizing fashion.
Another new exhibit is the restored Blackburn Pavilion which is a Victorian Birdhouse that I think used to be full of cages and the Humming bird enclosure. The whole interior has been ripped out and aside from some roomy aviaries for toucans and hornbills there is a marvelous walk through aviary where you can get quite close to the birds, with an annex for the humming birds. Outside the Pavilion is a fantastic clock, based upon Victorian mechanical toys, that puts on a display on every half hour, very eccentric and worth hanging about to see.
To my horror I discovered that the 1930s Art Deco Penguin pool no longer is home to anything other than some sculpture, but later found the little chaps in a pool by the shop, including a pair of rockhoppers with their comic eyebrow feathers. These two had been moved to London from Whipsnade for fighting with the penguins there. I also spied a heron on the roof of a nearby building who was waiting to grab a free fish dinner come feeding time.
Taking the tunnel under the road we paid a visit to what used to be the Clore Pavilion (Now I think called the Small Mammal House) which has also been refurbished since my last visit. It now boasts its own rain forest in the centre where a variety of monkeys and other creatures can run around as much as they like well except for the sloth who obviously wasn't doing any running!
With that it was almost time to go so with a quick visit to the Cape Hunting Dogs the Otters, Meer Cats and the Giraffes we headed back home.
So aside from all the mucking about to get in it was a fun afternoon and its good to see so many large enclosures where the animals have space to be animals. We didn't get there early enough to see everything, but we did have a very enjoyable day out.
