Review - Day out: Birmingham Nature Centre

On Saturday we visited Birmingham Nature Centre (previously known as Birmingham Zoo). The Centre houses a wide assortment of animals from around the world including lemurs, meerkats, porcupines, goats, spiders, snakes, cranes, and many many more! We visited along with a few of my online friends and their families as part of a ‘big meet’ of the forum we use.

The Centre is very easy to find, directly off the main road with signposts and the entrance located on the main road too. There is a large car park, although I didn’t realise the Centre is very near to Edgbaston cricket ground, and that on the day we visited, there was a huge match happening. This led to a huge queue of traffic to even get the Centre, and then a sign saying £15 for parking, when on the website it says free! No way were we paying that, but we found out afterwards that we could have been directed to separate part of the car park, even though we did tell them that we were just visiting the Nature Centre. In the end we found somewhere to park just up the road, outside the entrance to a construction site – luckily they weren’t working that day.

The entry fee is £5 for adults, £2.50 for children aged 5-16 years, and free for under 5’s. It was a fairly reasonable price for what there is, and there are also many of these dotted about for the children (and adults!) to have their photo taken in:

We all stopped and had a picnic at lunch time; this gave us opportunity to chat, take a huge group photo, and for the more mobile children to run away! The picnic area is nice, with a few picnic tables and a grassy area – though I think our group took up most of the area! There is also a cafe if you wish to buy something there, but we didn’t use it so don’t know of the range of prices.

Many of the animals were very active and visible, but some were sleeping, though anywhere you go, you can’t expect them all to be full of beans for visitors! Unfortunately we didn’t see all the animals that the Centre had to offer as we had to dash off a bit early, but we may go back another day if we are ever down that way again.