Bristol Zoo Gardens

On the good side, however, the zoo has a very good otter enclosure containing a pair of North American River Otters (Lontra canadensis). There are two ponds, grass, trees, shrubs, mud and rocks, and they have two heated houses to retreat too. They seem happy and perky animals, playing with the large pumpkin which floated in one of their pools. About half their enclosure is not visible to the public, so they have many options for retreating out of sight if they want to. The only let-down was that the otter talk was given by a volunteer who said he didn't know anything about them other than what was on his talk sheet, which wasn't really very informative.

Another star feature at this zoo is the sea lion enclosure - as well as looking from above, and through the underwater viewing windows, there is a glass tunnel through the water and the animals swim up to watch you and swim about inspecting you through the glass. They seem to enjoy this a lot, and it was really great for us.

The actual zoo is not very large in area and all the footways are tarmacked and flat. There is a burger bar and a restaurant, although the latter seemed to serve the same food as the former. There is a gift shop.

Bristol Zoo, being in Bristol, is only partially easy to find. Although there are brown elephant signs from the M5, they do desert you at vital moments so we found it more by hit and miss than a planned route. Also, the car park was coned off with a sign saying it was full, when it plainly wasn't - we drove into a side road that gave another route to access the car park, and parked and bought a parking ticket without any sign of surprise from the car park attendants who were busy coning off the entrance for no apparent reason.

I last visited the zoo on 23rd May 2003.