Sitlington Animal Park Tour - Part #2: Country Park

This is the second part of a series of posts touring Sitlington Animal Park, my low budget British zoo built on the side of a farm.

Farms are constantly looking at new ways of earning money and many open their own restaurants, farm shops and petting zoos to do just that. A place near me, called Cannon Hall Farm, has a petting zoo, an ice cream shop, a farm shop, a maize and tractor rides. This inspired me to make my own version but with a zoo as one of the attractions, alongside a country park with an ice cream shop, farm shop, maize and a few other small attractions I'll share here.

The country park occupies the area in front of the zoo and you have to drive through it to reach the zoo entrance. There's a long, winding road to follow, which I've flanked with mature oak trees to give it a park feel. I've also added banners along the side to advertise different attractions at the park — an idea I got from Cannon Hall Farm.

And since it's a recreational park where a lot of people would be walking about, I thought I'd add a speed limit and some speed bumps just to keep everyone safe.

Along the road, there's a vista of the farm house, which I added just to draw people's attention to the entrance area. I tried to frame it using a weeping willow tree, which for some reason always reminds me of the English countryside. It's one of my favourite views of the park and I've shown it so many times, people are probably bored of seeing it!

The road passes over the water via a stone arch bridge, which boats and swans can pass under. I didn't follow a reference when designing it so I'm not sure what kind of bridge it is but I think it looks okay. It's meant to be made of the same stone I used in all the buildings, a type of stone called Yorkstone that's used in a lot of Yorkshire buildings in real-life.

The road then forks between two car parks: one of them is flat and has disabled parking, since it's closer to the entrance, whereas the other is slightly bigger and built on a slope. In all honesty, they're not the biggest car parks in the world (there's about 40 spaces in total if I remember right) and, given that there's multiple attractions, I thought it was wise to add an overflow car park.

The overflow car park can be found in a clearing at the bottom of the country park and since it's a low budget attraction, I figured the park wouldn't spare any money surfacing it with concrete. Overflow car parks tend to be very basic at low budget attractions like this, so I just made it dirt, with a few custom-made traffic cones to mark out the parking spots.

The country park is dominated by a large lake with different attractions built around it. I got the idea from a country park not far from where I live, called Pugneys. The idea is, you can walk around it, whilst enjoying the attractions along the side, or just simply sit on a bench and take it all in. There's lots of grass, including the embankment, which would be perfect for picnics — just watch out for swans as they might steal your sandwiches! Of course, an essential safety feature of large lakes like this is a life ring and they're dotted all around the edge.

The tall structure you can see in the background is the Emley Moor Mast, which is a landmark that can be seen for miles around in this area. I added it just to help place the park in the West Yorkshire area.

The first attraction is a children's playground, which is an absolute must-have for any park like this. It's got a climbing frame, a see-saw, a roundabout, a swing set and, of course, a tractor-themed slide. I had a lot of fun building this stuff and it was made all the easier thanks to the scenery pieces in the Americas Animal Pack.

Another attraction is a zipline which I made using a technique where you use a curved barrier as a template to make a naturally curved rope. I'm not sure who came up with that technique but you're a genius. Ziplines are really popular at parks like this and it was a quick and easy way of filling some space.

Nearby, I added a small shack on the lakeside for guests to rent a rowing boat. I originally planned on making swan-shaped pedalos, inspired by the park at Cannon Hall, but I quickly found they were too tricky to make, so I opted for the much easier rowing boat. In hindsight, I think the rowing boats look a lot less gaudy and probably fit the park better. There's a small wooden pier where the boats are moored and the small shack contains the oars.

Since this is a farm-themed attraction, I just had to include a tractor ride. The idea would be for guests to board the trailer which would then be dragged around a circuit by the tractor. I got the idea from Cannon Hall Farm but I decided to make mine slightly more interesting by adding bumps and ditches along the road. Since I didn't have the patience to make my own tractor, I turned to the Steam Workshop, but I did make the trailer.

The final lakeside attraction is another farm favourite: a maize maze. This is yet another idea I borrowed from Cannon Hall Farm, as I loved the one there as a kid. As with any maze, the idea is to go in one end and then navigate your way out of the other. It would be a seasonal attraction since the maize probably wouldn't survive the winter and would need to be cut down and regrown for the summer.

At this point, you've probably gone full-circle and returned to the car park area. There isn't much to see here but you can get a little glimpse of what's to come through the zoo's perimeter fence.

One of my favourite things to do in Planet Zoo is to take ordinary buildings in real-life and transform them into zoo ones. The buildings that make up my entrance area actually belong to a small farm near where I live. It's actually not unusual for some zoos to use converted farm buildings as their entrance, for example Lincoln Zoo.

I used the smaller building on the side for the ice cream shop, named Meeko's Ice Cream (after my cat). Inside, I added an interior with an ice cream counter and a big menu on the wall. Interior design has never been my strong point but I don't think this is bad to say I completely improvised it.

I really liked the idea of this farm selling a lot of its own produce and I wanted that to include ice cream as well. Since the Barnyard Animal Pack didn't come with a dairy cow, I opted for the alpine goat instead, which is famed for its milk.

The building next door is the farm house where I guess the owners of the farm live. Around the back, you can find a garden but we'll be seeing that in the next installment. I wanted to give the house more of a purpose, like maybe by turning it into a little museum or a bed and breakfast, but honestly, I'd already done way more interiors than I originally planned to and I didn't want to do any more.

Passing down a small ramp, you can then find the next row of buildings. In the corner, I added a farm shop where the farm sells a range of produce. I learnt from an episode of Clarkson's Farm that farm shops are legally required to only sell their own produce or produce from other local farms. That means I had to avoid stocking things like watermelons and pineapples since farms don't commonly grow them in the UK. I used some images online to inspire the colour scheme but the green undulating walls were my idea and were meant to look like green rolling hills of the countryside. Since I didn't want to spend too long on interiors, I turned to the Steam Workshop to help speed things up; the fridge items, cakes and cash register are all from there.