Visit to Highland Wildlife Park

My Husband and I were up near Inverness for the Scottish Open and couple of weekends ago, but the golf was off due to the weather.  It had been raining very heavily and there were floods-a-plenty from Edinburgh right up to the Highlands.  The golf course at Castle Stuart was not only flooded but muddy and also suffered a couple of landslides.

When we realised we couldn't get to the golf, we decided to go to the Highland Wildlife Park instead.  It was only an hour or so away and we had never been before. I did ring them before we left Inverness though to make sure there were still open.

On the way there we took a wrong turning a couple of times because the signage is appalling.  There are no signs from the main road and really nothing until you're actually there.  Surely if they want people to visit, they should make it easier for them.  I think there should be signs on the main road to tempt drivers as they pass.

Anyway we arrived quite late in the afternoon and the rain was still coming down.  It's good then, that the first part is a drive around sitting in the comfort of your own car.  I had been worried about that part, as you hear terrible stories about animals causing damage, but they had told me earlier on the phone that they don't have the sort of animals that do that (mainly monkeys I believe).

Well they were right, they don't have that sort of animal in the drive around 'safari' part. However, they don't really have much of anything!  I won't write the exact names of the animals there (partly because it wasn't obvious) but there were:

• Elk
• Bison
• Red Deer
• Przewalski's Horse

Think that's about it.  We were really surprised.  I'm not sure I even see the point of the drive around section of the park.  There wasn't even any information boards to read.

We then parked up near the area with enclosures, really excited to see the tigers and polar bears.  Kitted out with waterproofs and an umbrella, we made our way to see the Amur Tiger enclosure.  The two tigers were very sensibly lying down inside, so I took a fairly rubbish picture.  Their enclosure looked really big outside though, so that was nice to see.  There were puddles all around, from the uneven ground, but we made our way back through the park to find the polar bears (on the way we saw a lovely owl, just begging for a photo!)

We knew that Mercedes (the famous polar bear, that used to be at Edinburgh Zoo) had died and couple of months ago but we'd heard there would be a male called Walker there to see.  Alas, we looked and looked but no polar bear did we see.  There was a huge enclosure that you looked down on with lots of trees and bushes, but surely a polar bear is big and would find it hard to hide?  We looked in the indoor area and finally concluded we wouldn't be seeing Walker the polar bear.  We were very upset to see a poster/information board about Mercedes in the viewing area, surely it's bad taste to still have that on show - it should at least be re-worded to let the reader now the situation.

We left the Highland Wildlife Park very disappointed and extremely glad we hadn't had to pay an entrance fee.  A real shame.