If you're a writer and find yourself in need of some inspiration, I can recommend a great place for you to visit to fill your brain with knowledge and ideas, and that is Colchester Zoo.
When I was younger, a place my family and I used to frequently go to was our local zoo in Colchester. We had the Merlin Passes, so it was easy for us to nip to the zoo on any day we fancied.
But it had been a good decade since I'd last gone.
We had arranged to go two years ago, but we never got around to it due to the weather and other factors. However, my family and I did take a trip to Colchester Zoo earlier this week.
And it was amazing.
I thoroughly enjoyed the seven hours or so that we spent at the zoo, walking around all the different areas. In fact, I don't we sat down for a break once and overall I totalled 12,279 steps and 5.6 miles.
Whilst at the zoo, we saw a vast variety of animals, ranging from giraffes, tigers, sea lions, aardvarks and guinea pigs. I loved seeing all the different animals and getting to spend time with my family, away from work, fully engrossed in the setting we were in.
My favourite animals to see were the orangutans – they mean something to my family – but also the otters, chimpanzees, tigers and elephants.
However, another takeaway for me was the inspiration that Colchester Zoo provided.
As a writer, inspiration can come in many different forms from all kinds of things in life. It can come from a story in the newspaper, a snippet of conversation you've overheard on the bus, or even the actions of your family and friends.
It is great when inspiration comes in abundance because it gives you different ideas for the components of storytelling, whether that be a location, character or whole story idea.
And that is what Colchester Zoo gave me on my visit.
If you know me by now, you'll know that I dream of being an author and I'm currently writing a dystopian novel – two in fact. Within these novels, the world is based on our current one, but several hundred years in the future.
As a result, there need to be unique components of each world, but also some specific and factually correct aspects. For example, in one of my novels, the forest is a key setting.
At Colchester Zoo, there were lots of animals that live in the woodland that could potentially feature in my novel.
Going away from the animals themselves, there was a ruin of the All Saints Church next to the Orangutan enclosure. Even just looking at the stone building gave me story ideas, as did the landscape of the sea lion enclosure.
Colchester Zoo don't just show you animals, they give you facts about them. At each enclosure, there are boards detailing the animals inside, giving their more common name, scientific name, diet, habitat, and some other weird and quirky facts.
As a child, I probably wouldn't have cared much for reading these boards, but now, as an adult, as someone who appreciates the world we live in and is eager to always learn, it was fascinating. Pictured below are just some examples of these boards and the facts they present to visitors.
Another aspect of Colchester Zoo that I thought was brilliant was the Nature Area. I don't remember this being there when I was younger, but I really liked this time.
Essentially, the Nature Area is just an area of the zoo full of nature; natural plants and insects. It was so quiet and serene there that I could quite easily go back with a notebook and write for hours on end.
The inspiration from Colchester Zoo is just what I needed after a busy month to get back to writing blog posts and also more of my novel(s). I even got two new notebooks from the shop at the zoo, which I can't wait to write in.
So, if you're looking for a fun day out that is a bit different from what you normally do, head to your closest zoo because there will be inspiration of some kind there in abundance.
Until next time...