report on my visit to the chestnut centre, chapel en le thrith, derbs - It rained, a lot . typical, sunny every working day, pees down on my first day off for ages- grrrr
Anyway the centre itself - I wasnt that impressed to be honest, I really like the
Otter and owl trusts centre in the new forest so I was expecting great things and frankly I didnt get them.
Photographic access was lousy - Except for my gargantuan height (6ft 4) I would have been stuffed as a lot of the barriers are 5ft plus, and the mesh is too shiny to shoot through, as it was I wound up climbing onto benches and on one enclosure on to the top of the safety fence (my bad) to get decent pics - Took over 100 and got 18 half decent ones, the best of which are attached here - nowt award winning though. ho hum
More importantly though the animals didnt look that happy and I got the distinct impression that the enclosures were too small (average 5m by 10m) and too many
Otters had been put in together, for example in one 5m x 5m enclosure they had 3 asian short claw
Otters, while in another 10x5 there were two europeans. The over crowding had manifested itself in a lack of vegetation worn away by trampling and the animals runing round and round on a sort of fixed circuit rather than behaving naturally - not good at all imo.
Overall I would say that if you live in the peak area and just want to see an
Otter without photographing it then you might as well go along as the entrance fee of six quid aint going to break the bank - however if you are going to travel you'd be better off going to the BWC at lingfield or the
Otter trust at bungay or plymouth, or the
Otter and owl sanctuary in the new forest.