Bears of the world unite

Our regular readers will know that we have recently made two new friends in the form of Naughty Bear and Small Seal. In fact, as we have said before, these guys provided the inspiration for this blog spot and we follow their adventures on a daily basis. We have a link to their blog spot in our favourite websites section.

Earlier this week we read about the indignities Bear and Small Seal suffered when, after a scary washing machine ordeal, that they faced with typical bear bravery, they were hung out to dry by the ears/flippers.We found it very distressing to look at the photo of them suffering, in fact we could only bring ourselves to look at it by peering through our paws.


Any non-bear readers may not realise the extent of bear/seal loyalty. If one of our kind suffers, we all suffer. We therefore thought it important that we protested on Bear & Seal's behalf. The reason we haven't posted anything for the last couple of days is because we have been busy planning our protest and making banners. In this photograph you see a few of us assembling, prior to setting off to the Houses of Parliament to meet our M.P. Rest assured there are more of us protesting than this picture implies. There are simply too many of us to fit in the picture.

Bear and Seal, our protest is for you, we hope it works and we can stamp out bear & seal torture forever!

Love from your brothers and sisters at Bears Unlimited.

Theo at the gates of Mordor

I ended my visit to Holkham beach by paddling back along the water’s edge, something I just love to do. I looked out for seals, but on this occasion they must all have been snoozing on Blakeney Point and I didn’t see any. I did chat to quite a few seagulls that were circling overhead and they appreciated the sandwich I had saved for them.

About half way back I came across a fantastic sand sculpture and went in for a closer look. I’d love to claim this creation was all my own work but I’m far too honest a bear to make such a claim. I did pat a few bits of sand into place to add some finishing touches and make my own mark. It was so big that there was plenty of room to wander round and explore. The big towers made me feel like an extra on a Lord of the Rings set. I could have stayed there all day but I could see my lift disappearing so I hastened along. It’s a sad thought that the incoming tide would have completely destroyed this wonderful sculpture, but I was glad I was there to see it.

Love Theo xxx

Sun, Sea, Sand and Theo

I couldn’t wait to get to the beach and urged my transporters to walk faster to get me there soonest. I gave a low growl of surprise when I came across some humans sunbathing in the sand dunes with no clothes on but it was explained to me that it was o.k. as part of Holkham beach is a naturist area. I still thought it best to avert my eyes though. The sandy beach goes on for miles and it is always a dilemma deciding where to set up camp as there is so much empty space to choose from. As there was a bit of a breeze I decided to set up my portable bear cave to provide a bit of shelter. It also provided somewhere to leave my gear while I went for a swim. I splashed around and jumped the surf to my heart’s content – sheer bliss. At one point I felt something nibble my toes – I think it might have been a crab and I wasn’t sure if he was being sociable or feeling hungry. After my swim I returned to my bear cave to dry off and enjoy a well earned drink and Twix finger. As I’m so proud of my portable bear cave I thought I would pose in it for a photo. If you log on tomorrow you’ll find out what I came across on my way home. Love Theo xxx

Theo Visits Holkham

Hello, I'm Theodore, Theo to my friends, and I volunteered to research the entry for Holkham Hall and beach for the Bears Unlimited "Friendly Planet Guide", introduced a few days ago. Holkham is my favourite place in North Norfolk and I am very lucky to live just a short distance away.

Yesterday afternoon was lovely and sunny so perfect for a trip Holkham. Being a thrifty bear and thinking of Bears Unlimited's profits, I shared a lift over with my minders and parked in the free village car park just outside the gates to Holkham Hall and Estate. If you park nearer the beach you have to pay and miss out on a nice walk and the delights of the Victoria pub. I thought I should save my energy for a swim and a stroll along the lovely sandy beach, so when we set out from the car I hitched a lift on the outside of a rucksack. Its much better for getting fresh air and views than travelling inside.


Here you see me checking out the sign outside the estate grounds that lets you know that the Hall has been in the hands of the Earls of Leicester (the Coke family) for a very long time. I’ll let you know about my time on the beach tomorrow.

Love from Theo xxx

Binham Beer Festival

As you will know by now, we Bears Unlimited bears are beer connoisseurs. We were, therefore, pleased and proud to win our latest contract, the task of providing some updates to the Good Beer Guide. In the name of research then we made our way over to a beer festival at the Norfolk village of Binham yesterday to sample a few brews. It was a lovely sunny day so we cycled over (about 10 miles) working up quite a thirst on the way.

The beer festival was held in a marquee in the grounds of the Chequers pub, which has it’s own very fine brewery producing Front Street beers. Woolly and Tommy were very taken with the amazing name of one of the brews (Captain Grumpy’s busted flush) so much so that they decided that they’d have to have their photo taken with the barrel otherwise no one would believe that this is what they had been drinking. This beer not only sounded good, it also tasted good: their second photo shows their pint being consumed at a pretty fast rate.


Love Tommy & Woolly (Hope you‘ve worked out which is which!)
xxx

5 Star Facilities

We returned to dry land after our punting trip with rather soggy fur, as a result of our dunking in the River Cam. We went back into the Garden Hotel to get ourselves a hot drink and decided to inspect the bathroom facilities. These were so bear friendly that we thought they deserved a special mention. We mean where else could we go and find special bear-sized towels provided? How thoughtful! Here we are about to help ourselves from the pile.

Love George, Yorkie & Chelmer
xxx

Bears unlimited launch a new product!

We have been having a busy week; Fakenham on Wednesday and Cambridge yesterday. However, the trouble with going somewhere new, is that you don’t always know the best places to buy some Nutella or how to find the finest pint of Wherry, or how best to get around (given that bears have short legs) and what bear- friendly attractions and activities are available.

So we are pleased to announce news of the latest product being developed by Bears Unlimited the “Friendly Planet Guide” a special travel guide for bears and all bear friends.

We called it the “Friendly Planet Guide” because a world with bears is always a friendly place and, so far, we haven’t been anywhere where there haven’t been friendly bears!

It will be some time before the book is published as we have a lot of research to carry out, but we gathered some good material on our trip to Cambridge. We started by investigating the Cambridge Park and Ride (good value but hard for little bears to see out of the window), we then took a tour of the city in a cycle rickshaw (which was great fun, feeling the wind in our fur – very cooling on a hot day).

Before an afternoon on the river punting we tested out lunch at the Garden Moat House hotel. This got the paws up of approval. There were far bigger chocolate éclairs than yesterday and a lovely piece of salmon. If only there had been some Wherry it would have been perfect.

As the hotel had river frontage the only real option after lunch was a punting trip on the River Cam. We clambered aboard the first punt available then realised that there were so many punts between us and open water that we would either have to move or face a long wait. We decided to move and were soon underway. Our progress wasn’t very fast as the punt pole was a bit big for the average bear but we had fun and managed to get enough forward momentum by using the canoe paddles provided. It was a very hot day so having a snooze in the punt was as appealing as doing the actual punting. As it was so hot we didn’t try not to fall in! We’ve included some of our photos of our day out.

Love George, Yorkie and Chelmer
xxx

What no racing?

We have had quite an interesting day today. We had a Bears Unlimited staff conference at Fakenham Racecourse. Now we know that Bear www.wheresbear.co.uk has sent a number of pictures in from Cheltenham Racecourse recently, and we were also there ourselves last month for the Greenbelt Arts festival, so we thought it would be interesting to take a picture or two to compare the difference.

Well, what can we say? Fakenham racecourse is tiny compared with Cheltenham; it’s basically bear-sized rather than human sized. They do quite a pleasant buffet lunch though and we especially enjoyed the bear-sized mini donuts, éclairs and strawberry and cream scones. Our only disappointment was that when we got to our afternoon tea break we found that all the leftovers from lunch had been cleared away so we couldn’t finish them off. I’m afraid Bear that there weren’t any nutella sandwiches though.

We were also a bit disappointed that there wasn’t any racing today as we were looking forward to saying hi to the horses and possibly winning a pound or two. The only activity that was happening was humans playing golf in the centre of the racecourse, which we thought was quite a novel concept.

Anyway, since there wasn’t any racing Yorkie, our friend Chelmer and I were

able to wander onto the course and test out one or two of the jumps. It made us realise how much longer horses’ legs are than ours!

Love George xxx

Furry friends of another kind

We're all having a good day as our friend Bear has told all his readers about us on his successful blogspot. As we relax at the end of the day with a pint of Wherry and a nutella sandwich (Bear's recipe) we're mulling over what we should next report on our blog spot.

We thought we would take a quick break from introducing ourselves (although there are lots more to come) and talk about a subject that will be close to the hearts of many of our readers - how pets turn a house into a welcoming home. At the Norfolk branch of Bears Unlimited our household includes Nibbles, a dark brown and white hamster. Nibbles came to live with us last October and he quickly became dearly loved by us all. We'll tell you the story of how he got his name. We were all in the car driving back from the pet shop in Norwich trying to think of a suitable name for our new friend. It was a drive of just over 20 miles so we had plenty of time to brain storm lots of possible names. However, none of the suggestions seemed quite right. Then, as we were about to turn into the drive of our house our Aunty Meryl who was also in the car said, 'oh good, now we're home we can have drinks & nibbles'. We all looked at each other and thought, nibbles, that's a good name for a hamster. We asked Nibbles what he thought and he twitched his whiskers in what we all took to be approval so Nibbles he became. Here's his photo so you can see how handsome he is.


The Ipswich branch of Bears Unlimited includes Panda the cat, so called because of his black & white colour (not because he looks like a Panda!). He chose to live with the Ipswich bears when he moved into their garden a few years ago. They were unable to trace an owner and concluded he was well and truly homeless and took him in, something they have never regretted. We'll get the Ipswich branch members to report in to tell you more Panda tails (tales?) but for now we will include his picture - a fine pose I'm sure you will all agree.

Bye for now. Lots of love, the gang xxx

Bears of the Caribbean!

Hi, we're George & Yorkie and you'll be seeing quite a lot of us as we're the travelling bears. For our minders it's a case of 'have bear will travel' and where they go we go. It's basically our size that makes us very suitable for travelling and we find stowing away in a variety of small spaces quite easy. What we lack in size we make up for in personality and as you will discover in the days to come we get up to some great adventures.

Here we are in swash buckling form aboard a traditional Icelandic fishing boat. We're perched up in the rigging looking out for whales. We only saw one on this occasion but it was a splendid minke and well worth seeing. We won the prize for seeing it first and celebrated with a welcome tot of rum just like the seasoned sailors we are.

Bear on a bridge

Hello readers, it’s my turn to say ‘hello’ and to introduce myself. I’m Ungi – a bit of an unusual name I know, but it’s a corruption of Honey, the name I had when I was a very young bear. I’m now quite a venerable old bear and celebrated a big birthday earlier this year, can you guess which one? As you may be able to see from my bald patches and numerous operation scars, I’ve been well loved (and still am) and have lots of life experience.

In view of my age and experience I am one of the Directors of Bears Unlimited. In particular I oversee our property portfolio and am always on the look out for suitable residences for bears. I also help run a refuge for battered bears and a telephone help line for any bears in trouble.

My favourite holidays are canal boating holidays. Last year I travelled the Llangollen canal and found this perfect bear bridge where I had my photo taken. Hope you like it.

Eddie introduces himself

Hello friends. I'm Eddie and I'm best known as the boating bear. I run seal trips for Bears Unlimited and am never happier than when I'm in a boat. I love them all: sailing boats, canal boats, fishing boats, canoes, anything boat shaped that I can get my paws on will do.

My introductory photo doesn't show me boating though (I didn't want the camera to get wet). It shows me with one of the other great loves of my life, a barrel of Woodforde's Wherry Beer. It is thirsty work working for Bears Unlimited and we get through so much at the end of a hard day's work that the brewery lorry is frequently to be seen pulling in to our drive.

Woodforde's will deliver their delicious beer all over the country so we thought we'd include a link to their site www.woodfordes.com , also we're secretly hoping that the nice people at Woodforde's will be so pleased with the free publicity we're giving them that they'll send us some complimentary supplies. Are we being unrealistic?

All this typing has made me thirsty so bye for now.

Love
Eddie
xxx

Credits

Before we proceed much further with this Blog we need to say thank you to Naughty Bear for providing us with the inspiration and motivation for setting up our own Bear Log (blog). Bear has a fantastic Blog spot at www.wheresbear.co.uk which has given us a lot of enjoyment since we first came across Bear at the recent Greenbelt Arts Festival. We all look up to Bear as a role model and can only hope we can begin to emulate his photogenic qualities and witty observations on life and nutella. Here he is.

Love and Bear hugs,

George & Yorkie

xxx

Our first posting

Welcome to the Bears Unlimited Blog Spot - we think Blog stands for Bear Log! In our next few postings we will begin to introduce ourselves.

Here you see me (Jimmy) with the sunglasses and Noël my best friend and constant companion enjoying a great British summer.