Alison Boulton digs beneath the city's dreaming spires

Walking with friends from London on a country walk just outside Oxford, one of their children stopped dead, and pointed downwards.

“What’s that?” they asked.

“It’s a cowpat.”

The child appeared baffled. It was her first sight of cow poo, and from the look on her mother’s face, probably the last one for a long time to come.

Similarly, one summer while we were living in the Yorkshire Dales, a city child came to stay. Opening the door into the cobbled yard, the child batted away a cloud of midges.

“Get rid of them,” he trilled.

Unlike our children, who collected ladybirds, searched under leaves for caterpillars and fished out worms from puddles, our young guest hated insects.

It struck me this week, as I walked around the Cotswold Wildlife Park and Gardens (CWPG), just thirty minutes car journey from Oxford, and accessed by our family on a whim of good weather, how valuable it is to encounter live animals – not just watch them on TV.

At CWPG, a collection of farm animals, guinea pigs and rabbits, are brought together for close observation and in some cases, handling. It may be some children’s first encounter with the animals on whom they unwittingly depend, on a daily basis, for their most basic needs. Bringing them together is a first step to self-awareness: it’s not all about you.

If CWPG brings the countryside to visitors, it also brings the world closer. If we understand, we care. If we care, we protect. The outstanding Madagascar exhibit showcases some of the island’s amazing native wildlife. The star players are free roaming lemurs, who leap from tree to tree, bound across waterfalls, and stand tall, dancing across the leaf-strewn ground. Small children fed them chopped vegetables, under sympathetic keeper supervision. This close encounter with live animals was a happy one. The children’s broad smiles reflected their luminous delight – their parents and grandparents’ cameras forgotten in the intensity of the experience.

Since the nearest my children are likely to get to Madagascar are the Dreamworks films, this was an invaluable, tantalising glimpse of another world.

For it’s true: no matter how spectacular the footage, informed the commentary or enthusiastic the guide, watching a wildlife film is no substitute for up-close and personal observation.

In live encounters, every sense is engaged. Standing on a high walkway, it’s difficult to forget the quiet, intense moment of connection when a giraffe turns its dark, long-lashed eyes on you. It’s amazing! This is not Africa, after all. Calmly, unblinking, you both watch each other. Freshly committed to memory is how the giraffe moved, sounded, smelled and wrapped its black tongue delicately around a thorny branch, tearing with its teeth.

It’s a genuine encounter of newly-minted respect. If only we, as humans, could teach so soundlessly, as much.