Whipsnade; Sunday, 05 September, 2021

As expected I didn’t have a great nights sleep – mostly as it was really quite warm, and the odd occasional weird squawk, bellow or snore coming from the neighbouring animals, so I was up shortly after dawn making it to the shower block ahead of my fellow primates and first dibs on the showers.

After a surprisingly decent shower for what was the equivalent of a camping site shower block on the top of an exposed chalk ridge, we checked out of our lodges and headed back down to the Restaurant for breakfast.

After breakfast we were taken on our final tour of the trip, with the first stop being in with the Lemurs where Patrick fed them their breakfast and they leapt about in front of us – before trying, and failing, to stage an escape attempt as we left the enclosure.

Next stop was the Eurasian Lynx both of whom were up and prowling, and next door a chance for the guests to help feed the family of wild boar – mum, dad and four very cute piglets – whilst being told that of all the animals in the zoo the boar are considered some of the most dangerous.

A short walk round just in time to see the Brown Bear, Cinderella, behaving like the princess and flouncing back off to her bed as we arrived, but that didn’t matter as our main attraction was the wolverines in the neighbouring enclosure.

The final part of the walk took us up to the penguins which is where the tour ended a few minutes before the zoos gates were due to be opened for the day, which gave us all time to head to parts of the zoo where there would likely be queues later so I, like several of my fellow guests, headed off to the Aquarium which, as it’s an inside exhibit, was one of the few still to have a queuing system.

I had a look round the aquarium and attached butterfly house before taking in the dinosaur exhibit, spider monkeys and red panda before head off back over to the Lion enclosure where in 14 hours the lions had managed to walk about 50 yards to be lying fast asleep in the sun. A final walk down past the Zebra, including the small foal that was out with its mum, and a check in on the cheetahs before I reached the Hippos in the far corner of the zoo.

By now I had seen all of the site, and after a quick lunch I made my way back towards the exit. If the Saturday bus service had been poor the Sunday bus service was non-existent, which if it hadn’t been such a nice day would have led to an expensive taxi fare back to either Dunstable or Luton. Luckily it was sunny and warm so I was able to follow the public footpath across the top of the Dunstable Downs, stopping off at the National Trust visitors centre for a bottle of water and then taking one of the less steep paths down off of the downs and back into Dunstable town centre.

Thankfully from Dunstable there was a 20-minute frequency bus service back to the hotel so I was able to catch that back to the hotel where I had another quick shower and a little nap before heading down to the restaurant for dinner and then an early night, before working out of the hotel the following morning and catching the train back home during lunch.