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NC500 - Highland Wildlife Park (Day 11)

Today was part of our long journey back to England. We opted for a stopover in St Andrews on our way back down as neither of us could face the journey in one sitting and we wanted to stop off the Highland Wildlife Park. When we were planning our honeymoon, we kept throwing around the idea of visiting the wildlife park, but we were hesitant on whether we would be able to fit it in alongside the other things we wanted to see/do. After much debate, we decided we wanted to see it, and seeing as we were stopping of in St Andrews it was practically on the way there. We set off early and got to the park mid-morning. The only drive through ‘zoo’ I had visited before was Knowsley Safari Park in which the driving area is great but the foot zoo is a little disappointing. We were worried that this would be the case here, and after the day, we both discovered each of us had the same fears that we would both be greatly disappointed. But I am pleased to say, I would rate this zoo very highly. The drive though section of the zoo is only small, here you will see a couple of species of Deer, the European elk, Vicuna, Przewalski’s horse, and the European Bison. This was when I started to worry that my thoughts were right and the rest of the park would be disappointing, but thankfully the walking part of the park has a variety of different animals you wouldn’t often see in a zoo, such as a polar bear. The Highland Wildlife Park has 4 polar bears when we visited, the males can be seen by the cars as they are near the entrance of the park, however at the other end of the park there was a mother polar bear and cub. Thankfully, we got to catch a glimpse of the cub. That is not something you get to see at every zoo. There is a host of other animals to see as well, including the European Wolf, Amur Tiger, Snow Leopard, Lynx, and Wolverine. The only animal we didn’t see was the Wolverine which disappointed me the most as this was one of the animals I really wanted to see, again for the fact that you don’t get to see this in a lot of other zoos. We spent the better part of the day at the zoo, and it was definitely worth it. But we didn’t want to hang around all day. We had another 2 hours 20 to get to our next AirBnB. The journey there still had some stunning views.





Our AirBnB was located just outside of St Andrews, in a small town called Cupar. We booked an annex hosted by Faye. The annex was very homely, and we were disappointed that we were only here for a night. Faye was a very attentive host, she greeted us not long after we had settled in to make sure that we didn’t need anything. We had the honour of receiving a flower from the beautiful garden that was hand picked by her granddaughter. You will just have to stay with Faye if you happen to be in the area, this way you will be able to see why she has a 4.99/5 star rating.

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