As with most places these days, we had to pre-book tickets. I had no trouble getting tickets for the day we wanted, and was able to book a couple of weeks in advance. My only concern was that we had a half hour slot, and the M6 frequently has delays, so I was a bit worried about missing our slot. However the traffic gods were smiling on us and we hit no hold ups on the first part of our journey.
Thanks to the Great British weather we've gotten into the habit of eating our picnic in the car park when we arrive somewhere, after having tickets checked at the entrance to the car park, and had planned to do this for the monkey forest, but actually tickets aren't checked before you drive onto the car park, so to make sure we made our time slot, we had to take our picnic in with us.
The car park wasn't overly busy and there was no queue at the ticket booth. When I bought the tickets I'd added on a monkey forest pen to complete the children's trail with, but in actual fact the trail didn't necessarily need to be completed whilst in the forest, and was more of an activity leaflet.
It was raining as we entered, and although there were plenty of tables outside the cafe, only a handful were under cover, and they were all taken. Nevertheless, there were plenty of parasols, so we found a table with a parasol, put it up, and I dried off the table and chairs as best I could whilst Daddy headed for the cafe. Thankfully the rain eased off and we managed to stay relatively dry whilst eating. The cafe seemed to be geared towards serving hot food normally, but was currently only serving takeaway sandwiches.
At the entrance to the forest itself, a lady with a microphone reminded us of the rules. No running, no shouting, no eating, supervise your children, don't approach the monkeys and definitely don't touch the monkeys. At this point Baby T was crying rather noisily as he was extremely tired and needed a nap. The lady very politely suggested we might want to calm him down before we went in, to avoid scaring the monkeys.
So Daddy walked T round until he fell asleep, which didn't take long, while F and I ventured into the forest.
I was extremely impressed with the number of staff positioned around the forest, and how attentive they were to the monkeys well being. As soon as a monkey approached a path where there were people nearby, the staff were there immediately to prevent anyone even considering trying to touch them.
I was also surprised by the number of monkeys we saw, and how many of them were quite happily foraging for food on grassy areas close to the paths. We also had a lot of fun seeing how many we could spot in the trees, and learnt a lot from the information signs dotted around the route.
There was hand sanitiser at the entrance to the toilets and the shop, with a one way system in place for the cafe. It was very easy to social distance in the forest for the most part, and it didn't feel crowded at all, no queuing required anywhere. The paths were wide and easy to navigate for a pushchair, if a touch wet and muddy. We saw several children wearing wellies which was probably a good idea in hindsight.
Overall it was an excellent way to break up our journey, get some fresh air and stretch our legs.
https://monkey-forest.com/
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