A Very Merry Christmas

Seasons greetings to everyone who knows us or is reading our post. We wish you a very happy and peaceful Christmas and an excellent New Year.


We hope you like our rather fine crib scene which is new this year at one of our churches. We think it is rather nice to have an outdoor crib and there is a lovely atmosphere when it is lit up at night.

The inspiration came from a crib of the same design that we used to see and admire every year on the garage roof of a house in Rugby near to the Midlands Branch HQ. The owner kindly supplied the plans when a member of the Midlands Branch enquired, originally asking to take a photo. The plans were duly taken to Norfolk and a kind and talented neighbour of ours took it from there. What a great job he's done - we love it and hope you do too.

Lots of love

All at Bears Unlimited xxx


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Villa Hermani Gets the Paws Up

It was nearly midnight when we reached Villa Hermani; the last part of the journey was on dirt roads in the national park. We'd got the impression we were in an exciting location, but we had to wait until morning, and the arrival of daylight, to find out more. On arrival it was just a case of enjoying a glass of home made schnapps left out by the owners and then finding our rooms and bed.

It was a thrill to wake up in the morning and have a wander out onto our balcony to look out the view across rolling pastureland with the distinctive yeti like haystacks.

Sorry our picture doesn't do it justice and the sun hadn't come out yet .. and the power lines got in the way ... but it was nice! And Villa Hermani was a lovely chalet style lodge with lots of wood ...

... and some wonderful natural additions. Outside were a huge bear and a wolf, and yes, we quickly made friends ...

... while inside were some real (but sadly not alive) creatures of the stuffed variety. By this we don't mean they had indulged in too much of the excellent Villa Hermani cuisine, rather that they had been for a visit to the local taxidermist.

On the way up the stairs to our room was a beautiful owl, but even more special was the splendid badger which was located right outside our room ....

... that's our room with the sun streaming in. The story of the badger is an interesting one. He had apparently fallen dead at the feet of Katerina, our hostess, while she was out walking with a party. She hadn't looked a gift horse in the mouth and had she couldn't have had a fresher corpse to get stuffed. We did feel very small in relation to Brock. We hadn't realised badgers are so big and I'm sure   we'd be quite scared if we met one out in the wild.

Villa Hermani didn't just look good, it was good. It was very comfortable and Katerina and Hermann our hosts looked after us wonderfully along with their hardworking team. The stage was set for a wonderful holiday. 

Lots of love

George, Yorkie and Chelmer xxx

Bucharest Beckons

We can hardly believe it, it's October already. In that case we'd better get our skates on and start reporting on our recent adventure which took us, last month, to one of Europe's last wilderness areas. We're talking about the beautiful country of Romania.

We'd booked on a walking and wildlife holiday with one of the 2 adventure travel companies we like to use, Exodus. We arranged our own flights though, which had several advantages, one of which was that we got into Bucharest several hours ahead of the group flight, so had time for a bit of exploration and research for the Friendly Planet Guide.

We hit a bit of a snag trying to catch the bus from the airport to the train station where we would be able to leave our luggage. We'd just been to an ATM to get some Romanian leus and ended up with no small change as a result, only fairly big notes. This freaked the lady at the bus ticket kiosk out no end, and we had to work hard, smiling or most disarming bear smiles, to get the tickets we needed (or thought we needed - see later).

Having deposited our luggage at the gare du nord (felt very French) we set off on paw into the city feeling like a weight had been lifted off our shoulders (it had - our luggage). Yorkie had done some research on where we should go before we left home and, being Yorkie, it had to involve food. All credit to Yorkie, it was lunchtime, and he took us to a truly wonderful restaurant.

What a gem it was, we had no idea we were going to be in for such a great treat. We're talking about Beca's kitchen which is a small bistro style restaurant where the food is cooked by the charming and talented Beca. There are no menus as fresh seasonal produce is used and the dishes change regularly. There was plenty of choice though as you can see from the blackboard behind us ...

... we were relieved to be given the English version as our Romanian is not too good. Beca herself came out to take our order and to explain the dishes. She also talked to us about her concept of serving food which is to make it an experience for her diners as if they were coming to her home to have a meal with her.  Her dishes are very carefully thought through and nutritionally balanced and, what more can we say, other than it all works and comes together beautifully.

Beca brought out the dishes herself and we loved every one. We drank raspberry iced tea then started with fresh pea and mint and pumpkin, ginger and chilli soups.  For our main courses we enjoyed chicken skewers with roast beetroot and carrot and basil and courgettes stuffed with cheese, basil and garlic served on salad leaves. We finished up with chocolate and chilli ice cream and a fruits of the forest cheesecake which was so beautifully light it was more of a cheese mousse!

The food, the ambience and the welcome was so good we stayed a good couple of hours. We did leave some time for a bit of sightseeing on the way back to the station. We had a city map so planned a walking route taking in some churches, parks and other historic buildings. It was a lovely sunny day so we took our time.

There is some great architecture in Bucharest and some interesting contrasts between Communism and Capitalism.  We think we'd like to spend a weekend there some time. 

We were a bit worried on our return bus trip to the airport, as although our ticket seller had told us there were 2 journeys on our travel cards, the cards showed up as used when we went to validate them. Fortunately you validate your card away from the driver and no inspectors got on! We were quite pleased nonetheless to get off the bus at the airport and await the arrival of our tour group and our 3 hour transfer to Villa Hermani which was to be our home for the week. 

More next time. 

Lots of love

George, Yorkie and Chelmer xxx

We're Not Afraid ...

Who's afraid of the big bad wolf, sorry Gruffalo?

Well, we weren't too sure what to think when we met him yesterday at Newmarket's July racecourse.



Patrick was initially very brave and took a selfie from a respectable distance in front of the Gruffalo. But he forgot the one golden rule, never turn your back on a Gruffalo. The next minute our hearts were in our mouths as Patrick was gripped by those terrible claws ...


... And lifted towards those huge fangs. What would happen next?

We were very worried. Did we have time to dial 999?

We should have had more confidence in our friend Patrick though. Patrick really does have the Irish gift of the gab and can charm the hind legs off a ... Gruffalo!

Suddenly the Gruffalo was smiling and waving , introducing his new friend to the crowd ..


When we finally got Patrick back we asked him what he'd said to the Gruffalo to turn around the tense situation. Patrick had apparently offered him a couple of rather tasty racing tips.

Patrick was none the worse for his adventure and reckoned the Gruffalo is just a gentle giant. We'll have to read his stories to find out more. Perhaps we had misjudged him.

We then settleddown to enjoy some great racing and to hope that Patrick's tips came good for the Gruffalo. Our favourite race was the greys' race where every runner is a grey. What a sight they all are in the parade ring and as they charge down the course as a great wall of grey. It's great to be able to make some confident predictions, such as, 'a grey is going to win!'

What a grey(t) day!

Lots of love

The B.U. Bears xxx

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Beating the Weather

For our last day we made a journey to the Mecca of the area for walkers, Malhamdale. The area is packed with interesting footpaths and there are the local beauty spots of Malham Cove and Malham Tarn to enjoy. We'd picked up a great walks leaflet at our caravan site, showing at least 6 back to back walks to choose from. We'd picked the blue route to start but we'd thought we might combine it with one of more of the other routes.

However, no sooner had we parked the Bearmobile at Malham, than the rain started falling. We decided to have  a look round the National Park visitors centre while we waited for the rain to stop.  It didn't seem to want to, even though the staff at the centre agreed that it wasn't forecast. We didn't want to waste our last day though, so we donned our waterproofs and set off, thinking we'd go at least as far as the cove.

As you will from our photo, as we got closer to the Cove, the rain stopped and our waterproofs came off. We were therefore able to plan and look forward to, a much longer walk.

We climbed up the steep steps to the left of the cove then enjoyed exploring the wonderful limestone pavement at the top ...

We think it is great that Health and Safety has given Malham Cove a miss and there is no safety fence or warnings just before the drop at the top of the Cove.

We continued to Malham Tarn where we tucked into our sandwiches and then we ranged a bit further afield until our path linked up with our lunch spot from 5 days earlier. We returned to Malham via Goredale Scar, enjoying a great cup of tea, in sunshine, from a mobile refreshment van just after the path to the Scar, after which we headed down to Janet's Foss ...

... after overnight rain and the rain from earlier, the waterfall looked pretty good. All too soon we were back at the Bearmobile and heading back to Ribby. We took her awning down in the dry, as rain was forecast for the morning. We then headed into Grassington to treat ourselves to a take away curry - delicious - and a great way to end a great holiday.

Lots of love

The B.U. caravanning party xxx

Stepping Back in Time

For day 4 we had something quite different planned. We'd all wanted to visit Beamish, the Living Museum of the north, for quite a while. While it wasn't quite on our doorstep, it was close enough for us to make the journey.

It was well worth the drive. The Beamish site was huge. We had arrived by 11:00 and when the site closed at 5:00 we still hadn't visited the fairground and had to whizz round other venues.

Talking of whizzing, there were various ways to get round the site including the fine tram and the vintage bus picture above. You could also travel on the steam elephant which was a wonderful reproduction of an early steam train with pistons travelling vertically rather than horizontally. Mind you, you could have walked the short distance of the track quicker than the steam elephant travelled ...

... that wasn't the point though, it was all about the experience.

During the course of the day we visited an 1820s hall and gardens, a 1900s town, a 1940s farm and a 1900s pit village and colliery.

We made friends with back yard pigs ...

... we went down a drift mine with very low roof - we were the only members of the party who didn't need hard hats as we were not tall enough to have to walk bent double trying not to bang our heads. We had great admiration for a game old lady who must have been well into her 80s who made it along the wet, dark seam.

... we also tested out an Anderson shelter

... there was plenty of room for us on the bench but it probably wasn't much fun for a gathering of adults and we felt it lacked a few mod cons! 

Thank you Beamish for a great day out. 

Lots of love 

The B.U. caravaners xxx

The Dales Way Revisited

Following a day off, we went walking again. We were staying very close to the route of the Dales Way which you may remember Yorkie and I, along with Gio, walked last September. As this was such a fine walk we were quite eager to revisit a stretch or two, and also to share the delights of the route with our friends, who had missed out first time round.

We picked the stretch each side of Kettlewell to walk and turned it into a circular walk by adding some new stretches of footpath. It was a big climb up to join the high level section into Kettlewell, but we all enjoyed the flattish walking, once we were up, and the great views. 

After Kettlewell we joined the riverside path up to Starbottom. It is a beautiful stretch and very popular with all sorts of walkers. The photo above is a new one, but we're fairly sure we'd posed for the same picture previously.

By the time we'd worked our way back to the bear mobile we'd covered over 15 miles, so we'd had a goodly walk. We'd kind of got used to one way walking and forgotten that you can only go half as far if you have to return as well! Fortunately the weather was good and we had plenty of daylight left.

Lots of love

The B.U. caravanners xxx