Some days you want to wake up in the quiet, potter about with a coffee, and then go and do something big and brilliant with the children. West Midlands Safari Park is one of those big brilliant days out, and it sits just down the road from us, about twelve miles away, around half an hour in the car. It pairs perfectly with a stay in the Montana, our family log cabin, so you can have the peace of the countryside at one end of the day and a proper adventure at the other.
The safari drive-through near Worcester
The best bit for a lot of families is the drive-through safari, where you go round in your own car and the animals come to you. There are over one hundred species at the park, and on the drive you might see rhinos, white tigers, lions and elephants, right there from your seat. It is a strange and lovely thing, being that close to animals like that, and the children just press their faces to the window and go quiet, which does not happen very often.
You take it at your own pace, wind your way round, stop where you like. It is just something a bit different, isn’t it? We are only about half an hour away, so you can be there not long after breakfast and still feel like you have hardly travelled at all.
More than the drive, the rest of the park
Once you have done the safari there is a whole day still ahead of you. There are walk-through exhibits where you can get closer on foot, a sea lion show, a dinosaur park and a theme park area with rides, so it works whether you have little ones or bigger ones who want the fast stuff. You can drift from one thing to the next and easily fill a full day without rushing.
We would always point you to the official West Midlands Safari Park site for current details before you go, so you can plan around what is open and what is on. That way you turn up knowing what you fancy doing first, and you make the most of it.
Making a weekend of it from the Worcestershire countryside
This is where staying in the Montana earns its keep. It is our only family retreat, sleeping two adults and up to two children under sixteen, with a king size master bedroom, a bunk room, full gas central heating and an outdoor enamel bath. So you can have a full day at the park, come back to a warm cabin, cook a meal in the kitchen and take it outside to eat looking out over open countryside. A posh picnic, basically.
The children can have a bath outdoors under the sky, which they will talk about long after they have forgotten the rides, and then everybody sleeps properly, because it is so quiet and so dark out here. A lot of families arrive from the city and cannot get over how many stars they can see. It does not seem natural to them at first, and then they love it.
Make it two nights and you have room to breathe. A day at the safari park, then a slow morning, a wander into the Ockeridge woods to listen for the birds, a look out towards the Malvern Hills from the gates. It is just about doing simple stuff around one big day out, and that mix is what makes a weekend feel like a proper break rather than a quick dash.
Come and stay in the Montana
If a family adventure with a calm countryside base sounds like your kind of weekend, come and find out what a night here really feels like. Book the Montana and let us spoil you a little.
