Plymouth 2024 - Day 2

The summation of the day is a wet and wild cinematic nightmare!

The NMA that we visited yesterday, and Dartmoor Zoo offer a ‘Wet and Wild’ deal which gets you half price entry to the second attraction you visit.  This made choosing which local zoo to visit a bit easier as we are always up for a good deal.

The original Dartmoor Zoo was forced to close in 2006 when the licence was revoked due to a number of concerns, but as portrayed in the 2011 film “We Bought a Zoo”, it was rescued by a local family and over the last 15 years they have established it as one of the major attractions in the area.  Now part of the British and Irish Association of Zoos, it plays an active part in a number of important breeding programmes with animals moving between affiliated sites.

The highlights of the day had to be the lynxs and the otters both of whom had youngsters cavorting about to our kids’ amusement.  On looking online we discovered the two lynx kittens were born in May this year and watching them pounce and wrestle with each other and generally wind each other up reminded me of some other youngsters we know…

The otters had one young pup (or whelp which I think is a great word) and on speaking to a ranger later in the day at their feeding time, we discovered that the baby was only six weeks old and hadn’t been seen out much and so we were very lucky to see it.  She also informed us that it had probably been when daddy otter was taking all his kids en masse for a toilet break – maybe not so cute after all!

Here is a selection of photos of other animals we saw, from all phones and cameras.  Including another of the kids' favourites, an axolotl.  We also saw lots of the big cats they have on site but no good photos of them as whilst we had good views, they were always at a distance and a bit beyond the kids' cameras capabilities.

Whilst small and a bit tired in some areas there were some lovely animals to see at Dartmoor Zoo and it certainly kept our kids entertained for the length of the day.  In contrast to yesterday the food was also really good in the onsite restaurant/café.  The main complaint we would have though is that it needed more information about the animals.  We often had to search for information boards to work out what we were looking for in an enclosure and when we did find them there was scant information and nothing much we didn’t already know.  The fact we had to rely on google to discover any information about the lynx kittens rather than that information being available on location says a lot.

When at home we usually have Thursday Film Night when each week we alternate who gets to pick the film.  This week was my turn and I had planned to bring my The Nightmare Before Christmas DVD with us as a perfect choice for Halloween.  Imagine my delight when I discovered that Vue Cinemas were doing special screenings of the film and it just happened to be on in Plymouth on this day.  So rather than lugging the DVD and DVD player with us from Wycombe to Plymouth, we completed today with a trip to Nandos before settling down in the ginormous reclining seats to enjoy the classic Tim Burton film.  Paloma of course wanted to get dressed up for Halloween and why not!

Blogged by Amber.