Most wildlife and safari parks keep you behind wire fences and glass screens, but the The Monkey Forest is genuinely different.
The one thing that always disappoints me about wildlife parks, safari parks and similar is that as much as they like to hype the experience, you can rarely do more than feed a rather bored looking Lama from the comfort of your car.
However The Monkey Forest does things very differently. The only animals here are Barbary macaque monkeys from the Atlas mountains of Algeria and Morocco, but the park has a very important difference – you walk through it!
The whole 60 acres is devoted to the monkeys and visitors walk through the trails amongst the trees and can actually see the animals in “as close to a natural environment” as possible.
Depending on the time of year, you’re likely to hear strange screeches as two monkeys argue over a nut they found high up in the canopy, a male monkey might walk across the path carrying a youngster on its back or maybe you’ll find one sitting down on the bench in a remarkably human stance.
The animals within The Monkey Forest are left alone as much as possible to ensure they can just get on with their lives, rather than being fed and monitored 24/7. And us lot…we’re just there to provide the monkeys with some “people watching” entertainment.
The entire experience happens near Trentham in Staffordshire (close to Stoke-on-Trent) so no exotic injections required.
There’s more information on the Monkey World web site.
More links around :
Trentham visitor attractions
Hotels in Stoke-on-Trent (near Trentham)
Self-catering in Stoke on Trent
