A Komodo dragon in the city
The largest lizard on earth lives here in a modest reptile house, and it is the sight children remember above everything else.
A Komodo dragon, a lizard that grows to the weight of a grown man, lives a short bus ride from Birmingham city centre, inside a council-run zoo of barely six and a half acres. That is the honest measure of Birmingham Wildlife Conservation Park: not a grand zoo, but a tightly chosen collection of small and endangered species kept in enclosures close enough for a child to watch a lynx yawn or a red panda pick its way along a branch. It opened in 1964 as Birmingham Zoo, reopened in 1974 as Birmingham Nature Centre and took its present name in 2014 to reflect its part in European breeding programmes for endangered species. Today it holds dozens of species: red pandas, capybaras, ring-tailed lemurs, meerkats standing sentry on their hind legs, Asian short-clawed otters, several tamarin monkeys, and a reptile house. The whole circuit takes an hour, two at a stretch, on level paths that suit pushchairs and wheelchairs without any effort. Timing matters. Summer hours (from the first week of April) are 10:00 to 17:00 daily with last entry at 16:00; in winter (from the last weekend of October) the gates shut at 16:00 and admissions stop at 15:00, and it is worth checking the council site for Christmas-period closures. Prices are modest by big-zoo standards: £9.50 for an adult on a term-time weekday, £11.50 at weekends, bank holidays and school holidays, which means a Gulf family visiting in July or August pays the higher rate, softened by a family ticket for two adults and three children. Our plain advice: do not travel to Birmingham for it, but if you are staying in the city with children under ten it makes an excellent half day, especially folded into Cannon Hill Park next door with its boating lake and the MAC arts centre a stone's throw away. Buses 1, 35, 45 and 47 from the centre stop close to the gate, and there is paid parking on site through the Pershore Road entrance if you are driving.
The largest lizard on earth lives here in a modest reptile house, and it is the sight children remember above everything else.
Compact enclosures let you watch red pandas climb and the European lynx at rest; feeding times are posted on a board just inside the entrance.
Pair it with the boating lake and the MAC arts centre next door for a full family half-day without moving on.
Pershore Road, Edgbaston, Birmingham B5 7RL
Not if you want a zoo in the full sense. This is a small park you finish in two hours, with no elephants or lions. Its strengths are the low price, the location minutes from central Birmingham and its scale for young children who tire quickly. If you are driving and want a whole day of big animals, the Safari Park is the better choice.
Easily. Buses 1, 35, 45 and 47 from the city centre serve the park and stop beside it in roughly fifteen minutes. The walk from the nearest railway stations is long, so the bus is the practical option.