On Friday the 22nd July the Oxford Summer Academy group had their half day excursion to visit the Cotswold Wildlife Park, located about 40 minutes outside Oxford. The students had the company of St Joes’s Science teacher, Pushpa and Local Marketing Content Producer, Cordie.
The park itself is situated in 160 acres of landscape, gardens and parkland, with on average around 350,000 visitors to the park per year, we were lucky that given it being peak season it was not overly busy or crowded. This allowed us to explore the park at our own pace, enjoying the beautiful scenery and admiring and learning about the animals. Students had the opportunity to see, lions, zebra, giraffes, meerkats, penguins, wolves, white rhinos and many more all whilst enjoying the beautiful Cotswold countryside and parkland. The park itself, has a very relaxed, welcoming atmosphere, one where the animals appeared, happy, relaxed, healthy and at home!
The students took a packed picnic lunch which they enjoyed under a huge picnic shelter, before embarking as a group to explore the park.
Students also enjoyed a quick stop off at the gift shop to collect some cuddly souvenirs and tokens to remind them of the trip before heading home!
The half day excursion was a great success, and with none of the students having previously visited the Wildlife Park before it made for an enjoyable, fun afternoon out, one that I hope this group of Academic Summer students will remember!
Student Comments
Isaline De Tiege
"It was a great experience! We saw different animals, even some I had never seen before (a capybara or a tapir). Some animals were quite scary, as the spiders and some were cute, as the meerkats. I really liked that afternoon and I think the best was to share those moments with other people"
Emma Carlotta Schoolman
"It is a huge park with different areas, like “Little Africa” where you could see giraffes and even a baby camel. You could also get on a small train and ride through the park past the wildlife. I really enjoyed seeing all these animals, although the wolves were a bit lazy. I also enjoyed the picnic breaks we took. I had a great time together with my friends. It was a nice, fun and interesting trip. The weather was nice too, only in the end it started raining."
Lucia Meskova
"It was extremely fun and we got to see the animals in a bigger and more natural area. In a normal zoo, their grasslands aren’t nearly as big and the animals here seem to have their freedom. I have seen a lot of animals before, and I thought that nothing could surprise me, but even so, I saw animals that I had never seen before in my life. Like, for example, the red squirrel, which was very cute, and so on. We saw porcupines, rhinoceros, wolves, capybara, meerkats, penguins, lions and many other animals. We had an amazing time. Since we are international students, our fun was telling each other the names of the animals in our languages.
So we not only had fun but also learned something and especially laughed a lot. It was one of those days that we won't forget. But just in case, we took a lot of pictures!"
