Whipsnade Zoo and River Cottage
I’ve taken some time off over the Easter holidays to do some family stuff. A combination of basic life-admin to try and get some of the inexcusable must-do tasks completed but also some down time and quality family time. I’ll be honest, I struggled to ease myself into it. Wednesday I think I drove my wife up the wall with my indecision and listlessness (all while she was ‘on holiday’ marking coursework and lesson planning. What a husband!).
The rest of the long weekend we managed to fill more successfully, however. A birthday party, getting Piglet’s hair cut (without protest!), getting my hair cut (without protest either, if less surprisingly), some camping prep, a fantastic Easter trail in Windsor Great Park and a trip to Whipsnade Zoo. The zoo will form the bulk of this post although the Easter trail deserves a mention. For £2.50 and the cost of 2 hours parking (far more than £2.50), Piglet had a whale of a time following the sign posted route around Windsor Great Park on his balance bike. A particular highlight was spotting Chris Evans (think breakfast DJ and TFI Friday rather than Marvel’s Captain America) out with his newly expanded family – twice. I think I even managed to retain some dignity and just smile politely rather than gawking and bothering him (I hope it came across like that anyway). The prize for completing the trail was meant to be some Easter chocolates but we were impressed that they also had a non-food based reward for those that couldn’t eat chocolate. Piglet was over the moon with his notebook on a lanyard and colouring pencils. It’s the little things…
Anyway – the key point here is the trip to Whipsnade Zoo. We decided to go on the Friday knowing that it would be busy for the Easter holidays but hopefully less busy that the peaks of the warmer weather or weekends. Despite the, now common, daily battles over getting dressed/not licking the mirror/general progression towards leaving the house in a vaguely orderly manner, we managed to get to the zoo not long after it opened giving us a full day to make the most of the entrance price. Piglet is luckily still a few days short of paying the entrance fee for 3-year-olds and over but £60 for two adults seemed a lot. I guess I’m just not used to paying for this kind of entertainment.
It turns out that we’d chosen a particularly chilly day to wander around outside in April all day. The first thing my wife did after getting our tickets was head back to the car for another layer. Piglet and I had just enough layers to allay the chill but you felt it whenever you stopped moving. I think this was part of the reason that Piglet was reluctant to walk any significant distance making travelling around the zoo just that little bit more difficult.
We managed to take in a wide range of animals, with particular interest coming from any animals that crossed over with characters from Piglet’s favourite books. Zebras, lions, giraffes, pelicans, penguins and elephants scored highly while Piglet was less interested in boars, tigers and African hunting dogs. Before arriving it was apparently the rhinos that he was most interested in matched also by his highlight of the day as we talked about it afterwards – despite seeing utterly non-plussed by the enormous intimidating animals when we did see them. Kids, eh?
My wife was most enamoured with the chimps who we got to see feeding (on raw onion) and behaving very sociably and intelligently. I would say I guess that’s why she likes me but I fear that’s a disservice to chimps in general. Anything that can upstage an elephant in my wife’s eye is an achievement though. The highlight for me, somewhat surprisingly, was the ‘birds of the world’ show. The control and confidence in demonstrating kestrels and other birds of prey was incredible. The parrots that did a touching-distance fly-by demonstration were fantastic too. I was impressed Piglet didn’t scream as close as they seemed to fly.
That said, I have to say I didn’t hugely enjoy the whole day. I’ll openly admit that I’m not really an ‘animal’ person. Also, despite ZFL clearly having an emphasis on conservation across the world and with a much deeper interest than just showing off animals in cages; it’s hard to find a huge amount of joy in wild animals so desensitised to parading in front of humans. Nothing I saw seemed cruel and I understand that some of the animals have the largest enclosures of their kind in Europe – but the sadness was unmistakable in the large female Asian elephant that was just walking forwards and backwards in a straight line for the full 20 minutes we stood watching her. I also have to admit that, despite not having a huge interest, I’m spoilt. The only other zoo I’ve really been to as an adult is Singapore Zoo which is a world leading zoo with remarkable sense of experience. From what I understand, it’s largely due to my wife’s uncle (he was the Director of Singapore Zoo for many years) that you get to experience the animals so naturally but easily there. It’s hard to compete with that. We’ve also seen Asian Elephants in sanctuary in Bali. In hindsight, I’m not 100% sure how good the conditions were for the elephants there either but having being close enough to them to experience their own individual personalities, it was hard not to feel sorry for the ones surrounded by reinforced steel barriers at Whipsnade.
Unfortunately another reason I didn’t have the greatest day was due to our experiences at lunch.
We’d done our research before arriving and found that, of the various catering options on site, River Cottage restaurant was likely to do the best options for our dietary requirements. As a result, we planned our morning route through the zoo to coincide with heading there around lunchtime. It was busy so we wanted to make sure we got there fairly early to give us the best chance of eating there.
We were greeted with the rather abrupt question of ‘are you eating here today?’ on arriving. Once seated, we realised it was because quite a lot of people wandered in looking for the deli and cafe next door but it still set a tone that wasn’t ever quite reversed. The place wasn’t particularly big with maybe 20 tables inside (and a lot more outside although too cold for anyone other than the bravest/warmest families to attempt). We were sat fairly close to the entrance and as a result we watched this awkward introduction script played out time and time again.
The menu was good in that it highlighted a few of the key allergies from the start and we were given a clear allergy-matrix menu on request. For reasons that I’ll cover in another post, my wife is currently trying to remove gluten and some other processed food from her diet. It’s not for allergy reasons so there’s a little more give than on milk and soya, but it makes choosing that bit more difficult. While there were a couple of obvious options for me and Piglet, the options for my wife were more limited. If sticking strictly to the allergy matrix there was only a starter and an item on the kids menu that fully fitted her requirements. However, we noticed that an item on the main menu was just a variation of a fish dish on the kids menu that was suitable so we thought it might be possible to remove the pesto from the adult portion and make this suitable.
Our highly strung waitress came back to ask us after quite a long time whether we were free with the allergen matrix. I said yes, hoping that would mean we would get to place our order, only to find that the allergen menu was handed to another family and we were left waiting again. Eventually after a wave of new families were seated and other orders taken she realised that we still had our menus and asked us (as if surprised) whether our orders had been taken. It wasn’t going well… I explained our allergies and stated that the allergen menu declared Piglet’s and my lunches OK. However, I’d need to ask about my wife’s choice. The response to this was “we’re not allowed to give allergy advice – everything is in the allergy menu”. While I can understand the caution, and to an extent the policy, the manner of communication was so blunt that I was quite taken aback. On explaining what we were hoping to order, the waitress was very happy to remove the pesto but was not willing to make any inquiries about whether that would make the meal dairy-free (as the kids version would have been).
Interestingly, I didn’t hear it at the time but my wife said that the waitress quoted ‘the law’ as the reason we couldn’t enquire further about the allergen info. If so that’s particularly annoying because I don’t believe the law states anything beyond knowing what allergens are in the food, through conversation or an allergen menu. Also there’s nothing stopping them breaking down the meals into individual constituents (such as the pesto) or offering substitution advice like other restaurants do.
Fairly confident that the pesto was the only difference between the adults and kids versions we went ahead and ordered. Reasonably experienced and weathered by these kind of events we kind of shrugged it off but a few years ago we would have been completely flummoxed by this – and probably had to leave. When our food arrived both my wife and I scoured her plate for any hint of butter dressing or the like – we both convinced ourselves the food was OK. Not a risk we would have taken for a more serious allergy. To give credit where it’s due – the food was fantastic and we all really enjoyed what we’d ordered. There were also no indications afterwards that there was any milk digested.
Having had a chance to think about it away from the heat of the moment I’ve come to the conclusion that it was more the customer service rather than the allergy catering that bothered me. They had an up to date and clear allergy matrix and stuck to it rigidly. It’s just unfortunate that when dealing with complex dietary requirements (such as multiple allergies) it can be difficult to choose, and here some support and guidance would be nice. I don’t expect them to cater for each combination of allergies, specifically when there are maybe only 10-12 items on the entire menu. It was just the frustration of knowing that the kitchen would be simultaneously preparing two versions of essentially the same fish dish – a kids one with no dairy and an adults one with dairy. To find out what the similarities/differences between the two must have been fairly easy. But allergy bureaucracy put a barrier to that question even being asked.
The other thing to point out is that it was a busy day in the Easter holidays for a kitchen located on a zoo. Many, many families will have passed through that day and probably most days over the two weeks either side of that Friday. But that’s one of the reasons the customer service surprised me overall: they must get so many requests like ours, you’d think they’d be good at managing it. It may be unfair but the waitress who served us (the senior waitress on the day I’d have guessed from the interactions with other staff) seemed utterly overwhelmed. Also it wasn’t some sort of high-churn canteen, rather a high-quality restaurant with a celebrity chef link (Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall). I would have expected a bit more. My main course cost £15 so it wasn’t exactly mass produced fast food.
In contrast, because we were out all day, we stopped in at Pizza Express on the way back home for a light evening meal. I’ve eulogised plenty of times about the highlights of Pizza Express before, but the reassurance of being able to order a custom meal with a dairy-free cheese alternative and a gluten-free base was made all the more valuable in comparison to our meal earlier in the day. It may be a large-scale-chain serving exactly the same food all over the country (there were 5 of the restaurants within driving distance when I searched for one back at the car!) but the food was good, great even, and the allergy requirements treated with utter respect. I can’t begin to explain how much better an eating environment that creates. And, as I’ve said time and time again, we – and many others – will spend hundreds of pounds in the chain over the course of the year as a result.
I’d like to find out whether we just unlucky landing a stressed waitress on the wrong day at River Cottage or whether the policy of not going beyond the allergy matrix would have led to the same conversation on any day. However, I don’t think we’ll be hurrying back to find out. The food was nice, though.