Today we decided to have out half term day out and this time we decided that the venue would be Knowsley Safari Park. The delivery of my new camera (Panasonic DMC-FZ7 was perfectly timed this morning!).

For those of you not from the area Knowsley Safari park is located not a million miles away from Liverpool just off the M57 motorway. From our house the drive is about 40 minutes and for once we didn’t get stuck in traffic. We decided the take Helen’s car as we didn’t want a stary Lions claw going straight through the roof of mine!

We have used some Tesco Clubcard points in order to reduce the cost and so entry was a bargain £2. First came the Safari drive with some magnificent animals all the way around the drive. The Lions were one of the bottle necked areas. Here there was just the one male and about 10 females. These must have been all his bitches! There were beautiful creatures and they were not really bothered in the slightest with all the cars and people viewing them. You think that they would get a little annoyed by it, but like us, on a beautiful day all they wanted to do was to sunbathe in the lovely weather. The male is the one with the mane and amazing it was to. At one point 4 of the females were getting restless. He wandered over and put a stop to it very quickly. It was funny to watch.

Half way around the drive there is the Baboon pen. This is the one were there is the ‘friendly’ drive and the ‘normal (not so friendly?)’ drive. Clear warning signs are displayed warning you that they will jump on cars and may cause damage – enter at your own risk. You hear this and don’t really every believe it but it was true. They were all over most cars and some of them doing some tremendous damage. There was a Vauxhall in front of use with the wing mirror ripped off and a Volkswagen that had a plastic roof seal (the bit that goes in the gutter were the roof rack would fit) ripped upwards. Thankfully our car did not attract any Baboon attention.

At the end of the safari drive there are some other attractions to see. We went and watched the Sea Lion display which was amazing. The get the Sea Lions doing all sorts of tricks and you really do wonder how they train them to do that. Also in this area was the Otters and the Meer Kats. I remember watching a program (Wildlife on One I think) many years ago about Meer Kats and the way that the keep guard on their back legs. What I didn’t realise was how small they were. There are smaller than a pet cat by a long way. In fact George and Jeremy are bigger than them. The other highlight of this area was the Otters. We never thought we would see them as they are very good at hiding but they were out about in force. Two of them, fighting over an empty Skittles rapper that some, not so nice visitor, had left behind for them. They were such interesting and energetic creatures and it was lovely to get a big glimpse of them in the pool and messing around with each other.

We really enjoyed the trip and would definitely go back. You will need a good 3 hours as the drive takes around 2 hours with all the cars stopping etc. to look at the various animals.

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Knowsley Safari Park
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