Wye Valley Butterfly Zoo, Mini Golf & Hedge Maze

On our way home from the West Midlands after an action packed day and night at Drayton Manor Theme Park, we decided to stop at the Wye Valley Butterfly Zoo. This wasn’t my first stop here, as I’d come here several times as a child and had visited with my husband in 2015 as well, but it was our first visit with our son William, who was 15 months old. Over the years this attraction has had more and more added to it and now has quite a large hedge maze as well as a mini golf course, picnic site and a cafe. It would be easy to spend all day here, but on this visit we were just heading in for an hour to stretch our legs and break up our journey.

  The Butterfly House at Wye Valley Butterfly Zoo

One of the things I’m not keen on being added is the addition of parking enforcement. In all previous visits, parking has been free, but is now charged at £3 for 4 hours or £5.50 for 9 hours. Now this in itself isn’t that annoying, especially as you get a £2 refund when you buy a ticket – so it ends up being 4 hours for £1, but it’s worth being aware this is managed by Parking Eye, a notoriously predatory firm. If you read some of the TripAdvisor reviews you will definitely notice a trend of customers unhappy with the parking, and it’s a shame that the rating of the venue is being dragged down by parking tickets. The main things to be aware of with Parking Eye is that your parking time starts from the time you enter the parking lot – so make a note of that time rather than the time on the ticket (annoying if you have to head in for change or there’s a queue for the meter) and ensure that you input your license registration correctly, as it’s an automated system with no flexibility for mistakes.

My son was completely in love with the very friendly sheep who crowded up to the fence right next to our car (not part of the attraction, but he ended up spending half hour babbling to them!).

Living up to the Welsh part of the blog name by including some sheep!

The Wye Valley Butterfly House is staffed by friendly professionals who are quite happy to chat to you about the butterflies and attractions and although it’s not mentioned on the price list, under 5s are free.

Price list at Wye Valley Butterfly Zoo

It only really takes 15-30 minutes at most to wander around the Butterfly House, so some may feel this isn’t the best value for money, but for us it’s a small business worth supporting and a lovely little attraction. We paid £8.50 for two adults and a toddler and thought it was a great experience. It’s educational and interesting and although William was a bit too young to understand, he was definitely fascinated. If you combine it with the maze (easily an hour or two) and the golf (perhaps 30 minutes), have a picnic on the benches or enjoy the cafe, then you can easily spend 4 hours here. We thought the prices in the cafe were great and the toilet facilities large and spotless.

The Mini Golf Course at Wye Valley Butterfly Zoo

See the other animal attractions and zoos we’ve visited!