Syon Park Tropical Zoo

The little one is mega keen on animals and has been imagining "snap snaps" (obviously his word for crocodile/alligator or similar) in all sorts of places, especially the pile of logs outside the site manager's shed. So I wanted to try and find him a real one to visit. (Am very excited about taking him to London Zoo but waiting on the new Penguin beach). So after some googling I came across the Syon Park Tropical Zoo. This is close to us with free parking and obviously surrounded with open space so if the little boy needed to run he could. When I say run imagine a drunk very camp man attempting to run, bless, he puts lots of energy in and all limbs seem to move more and faster but his actual forward motion seems to change very little.
Anyway headed there last Saturday and had a really lovely day. It is a rescue centre and has a lovely eccentric feel about it. There are cats lounging on the desk and in the gift shop and the whole thing is in a slightly ramshackle greenhouse.


We arrived just in time for the first meet the animals session, which was fab. The toddler got to feed some tortoises, touch lizards and a Cayman- which definitely counts as a snap snap.


The guy running the session was lovely and I actually learnt stuff! My little one has a slight history of being a wuss but he was remarkably brave with all the creatures. The only time he got upset was when a locust was put on the floor and promptly gobbled up by the lizard, he was not a fan of that.
This on the other hand he was fine with...


We had a lovely time exploring the rest of the little zoo which is tiny but has enough interesting creatures and knowledgable staff to keep everyone entertained.
This massive guy was just hanging out on his own outside the gift shop.




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