This was the beginning of weekend on the Wirral. ‘Where shall we go?’ ‘How about Chester Zoo?’. ‘Yeah, I love that place. I haven’t been there for years!’ (though we have had a peep when cycling along the bridleway through the middle of the zoo many times).

We had booked a couple of days stay at a Village Hotel on the Wirral. So on a cool but thankfully fairly bright Friday morning we made our way over to the zoo.

There’s a lot to see. The pamphlet you are given on entry says over 12,500 animals. It was going to be a busy day. First stop, the elephant enclosure.

  

We had been watching The Secret Life of the Zoo programme on TV recently about life at Chester Zoo, and of course the elephants are major stars of it.

After a brief diversion to the monkey enclosure we came across one of the hidden gems of the zoo, the ‘Butterfly Journey’. Here, as you walk through the building, hundreds of colourful butterfly flutter around you. It is intoxicating.

 

We then visited the Tropical Realm section. Another animal house where many of the occupants were free to roam.

  

Not all residents of The Spirit of the Jaguar animal house were allowed to roam freely …thankfully.

  

However, as if to show that some of the most interesting animals weren’t necessarily the largest we next watched in fascination as the Treecutter Ants busily took supplies back to their nest

We passed a number of other enclosures – including my favourites the penguins – and then took a lunch break in the Sunken Garden.

  

 

Another of my favourites are bears. These would prove somewhat elusive. The Sun Bears, for instance, kept disappearing from view and it was only by chance we managed to capture this photo. And later, the Sumatran Bear was hidden completely.

A major new section at Chester Zoo are the Islands. Here, various habitat sections including the foliage have been created. These include Sumatra and Bali.

There were also a lot of bicycles on display!

In truth the section was a little sparse with animals, but this may just have been due to the weather conditions and the displays not yet being quite complete.

It includes an impressive Monsoon Forest animal house.

A further feature is a boat ride which takes you between the islands.

We actually managed to get a better view  of some of the animals in their enclosures than when we had walked round.

By now our feet were getting tired, and there was still plenty we hadn’t seen. We decided to content ourselves by finishing off with a visit to the rhino enclosure.

One of which blew a kiss when we were leaving …

This had been a thoroughly enjoyable visit, and we will certainly be visiting again. However, now it was time to head for the hotel.