Our West Midlands Safari Park Trip

This is another long time coming one...
Last year when they announced they had white tigers I promised Ray a trip to see them. My daughter being some what obsessed with the creatures

However it never happened.

We are down to the last week of this summer and John is away so I promised her again.

Yesterday was awful and my eye was really playing up so I wasn't sure if a 130 mile round trip was really on the card, however she had told every one at PATCH she was going so this morning having check with DVLA website how much of my vision I still had to have to drive -120' in case any one else needs to know- and concluding I still had that much and there was no other medical reasons why I shouldn't be driving- we set off.

Drive there went fine = M6 toll road was fun and we eventually made our way through Kidderminster and discovered that not all the cars in the traffic jam were going to the park. Which was a real relief. We arrived at 11ish and decided food first drive through the park second - which proved to be a good call as we got into the cafe just as it opened and missed the crush!

We then met a snake and wandered through the reptile house, twilight cave - where we met the cutes thing ever - a AyeAye which are much bigger than I expected and was so cute that ray bought a cuddly aye aye as a souvenir rather than (yet another) white tiger (Its currently staring at me whilst I type). She also got a foam pith helmet which she insisted on wearing on the drive round. We spent a lot of time looking at an asleep jaguar

and then caught the sealion show before heading back to the car for a drive.

All the signs warned that it gets busy from 11 to 2 and when we set off into the park a 1:45 there were signs warning you that it was taking over 2 hours. We had the fun of watching the baby rhino bound off across the grass leaving a very disgruntled mum to face down the coach that had got in the way!

The wolves were asleep

but the antelope were being very active including a lot of calves.

Then we got to white tiger ridge...

He posed for us - there was a moron leaning out of the window of a car infront and I did hope at one point that I could solve my money wories with an exclusive front page picture under "Idiot generously feeds hungry cat" headline - but no such luck.

Instead as we came round he turned to look at us and smiled.
Ray was completely blown away by the experience.

The rest of the drive wasn't an anti climax - but it couldn't live up to that!
We did see the "normal coloured" lions
But the white lions were hiding and the white walabies were ridiculously cute!

(I think WMSP mush be going for white themed animals!) and although we did see other tigers even closer than that they were behind a fence so the pictures aren't as good


and they were not performing for us like he did. There were elephants, giraffe and zebra and lots more cattle variants.

Plus one shaggy camel!!

By the time we got to the end, 90 mins later, the cars engine was warmer than its normal running temp, I was worrying a little about the clutch after all the creeping we were doing- and ray needed to get out cos her bum went numb!

We grabbed a drink and yet another ice cream and brought a pressy for john (so we had change for the toll on the way home) and then headed home...

The thing is they obviously don't expect people heading north on the M6 to be looking for the M6 toll road and the map we had was so old the M6 Toll wasn't on it!
For future reference COME OFF AT JUNCTION 11!
We missed it - got trapped in traffic and then had a fun detour via cannock looking for the M6 TOll heading south - All in all I was impressed by it - its clear of traffic when the M6 was nose to bumper snails pace. We managed to get back for only £2.50 because we were late enough in the day. It only started raining when we got to Burton!

All in all it was a good day - even with the traffic jam and detour!