The Beat Goes On ....

Hi everyone, Chelmer Bear here. I've been fairly quiet on the blog so far but I'm sure you'll recognise me from a number of pictures I've popped up in, particularly those taken on the rambles earlier this week.

Like most of my Bears Unlimited friends I've got quite a few diverse interests and hobbies, but I am unique in that I'm the only serious drummer in Bears Unlimited. I've got drumming in my blood and there are few things I like better than to settle myself in front of my drum kit and crash out a few rhythms (I've learnt not to do this too early in the morning though!)

Of course, drumming on your own isn't as much fun as playing with a band. I'm in the process of getting the Bears Unlimited band together and up to performing standard, but we're not quite there yet. I was, therefore, particularly pleased when my friend Wade invited me along to a gig his band was doing last night.

Wade is the drummer with a band called 'The Usual Suspects'. They play some great rock numbers and it is sometimes hard to tell their renditions from those of the original artists - not bad when we're talking the likes of Elvis and the Stones. Here I am with Wade giving him a hand and about to get the full force of the music (it was very loud!)


During the first half I impressed Wade so much with my musicianship that he let me do a guest drumming spot in the second half. I had sole control of the drums for King of the Road and Ride around Sally. The adrenalin really flowed and I had the time of my life.

At the end of my spot I was parched so downed a large beer in record time. I hope I can do it again soon (both the drumming and the beer).


If you live in Norfolk look out for The Usual Suspects appearing at a venue near you. If you don't live in Norfolk, it may be that I've got the Bears Unlimited band up to scratch for a spot in the Performance cafe at the next Greenbelt. Keep your eyes and ears open.

Lots of love, Chelmer xxx

We Recharge our Batteries in the Countryside

Confection, of the Midlands branch, makes a very good guide and yesterday he took us to the outskirts of Coventry for another calorie busting walk.

Early on in the walk he showed us some of the new footpath signs that the Midlands branch have helped to put in as part of their philantropic work. Confection is passionate about getting people out of their cars to enjoy the countryside under their own steam, so this is one of his pet projects and he is setting a very high standard of workmanship.


The weather was even better than the day before and yes, we even got some sunshine which made our teddy bears picnic in the woods even more enjoyable. Yes, we know that having sandwiches as big as, if not bigger, than ourselves, is not the best way to shed calories, but the left over turkey and ham was really tasty and we did have a healthy clementine for pudding.


After lunch we came across a big holly bush really laden with lovely red berries. Even though Christmas is now mostly over, the 12 days of Christmas are not up, so Noel bearfully braved the prickles to gather some for us.

We hope your day was as lovely as ours.

Love the bears Unlimited ramblers xxx

My Lords & Ladies ...

We were going to ask our readers to tell us where we are in this photo but we realised that we gave the game away yesterday when we said we drove over to Warwick.

There are no prizes, therefore, for guessing that we are looking at Warwick Castle, or we would be if we hadn't turned our backs temporarily to pose for this shot. This bridge provides a great view and we shall certainly be recommending a visit to this viewpoint in the budget traveller's section of the Warwick chapter of the Friendly Planet Guide.

Our perch on this bridge was a little precarious as if we had fallen backwards if would have been a long fall into cold river waters. We therefore clung on tightly and angled ourselves forward. After all, Isaiah's mishap was enough for one day.

We thought we would save a visit to the inside of the castle for another day as we were enjoying being outdoors and our lovely walk so much.

We've got another great walk that we did today to tell you about tomorrow.

Love Chelmer, George & Yorkie xxx

Off his head ... but not through drinking too much!

We hope you had as good a Christmas as ours. The Norfolk and Suffolk branches of Bears Unlimited joined with the Midlands branch at the Midlands branch HQ. We always have a riot of a good time when we all get together. We simply can't stop chatting and we often forget to go to sleep as we are enjoying ourselves so much. In fact one of our number talked so much he didn't exactly talk the hind legs off a donkey, but he did talk his own head off (more later).

We ate and drank to our hearts content yesterday which was great, but today we felt a brisk walk and some energetic exercise was called for. We drove over to Warwick in the bearmobiles and spent the day walking along a canal and a river path, exploring a big park and crossing a racecourse and golf course.

The park had a excellent play area which included a bear assault course. We were all up for the challenge and our pictures will show you just how energetic we were. Sadly George's brother Isaiah suffered a bit of a mishap at the picnic table. All the talking he did yesterday, followed by the pre-lunch athletic activity led to the loss of his head as his minder was reaching in her rucksack for a coffee cream. We don't know whether it was her or Isaiah who was the most shocked when she retrieved a bear head rather than a coffee cream!

We don't want you to worry too much about this mishap though as the Midlands branch has excellent medical facilities and after a quick operation and recovery period in the airing cupboard, we are pleased to report that Isaiah now appears to be as good as new and has been pronounced fit to travel back to the Suffolk branch HQ tonight. We'll sure he'll send us a picture in the next day or two to assure us all that he is none the worse for his ordeal.

You will note however, that if you play spot the difference between the before and after lunch pictures you will see that Isaiah fails to appear.

Lots of love, all branches of Bears Unlimited xxx

In The Bleak Midwinter ...

Tonight the Bears Unlimited choir (which is all of us) has been doing some carol singing. We started off outdoors where we sang all the cold outdoor carols such as In the Bleak Midwinter and Good King Wenceslas. One neighbour was very appreciative and brought us out some mince pies and mulled wine which we thoroughly enjoyed. We think everyone else must have been watching the Strictly Come Dancing final as it as very quiet out on the streets.

We came indoors a little while ago to warm up by the fire and sing some more of our favourites. We have been singing ''now bring us some figgy pudding'' very loud but our minders haven't brought us any yet, although we have been told there is spaghetti bolognaise on the way which is an acceptable substitute in our eyes.

If only we had sound on our blog spot you would be able to hear us all singing to you, ''we wish you a merry Christmas and a happy New year''. Even though you can't hear us it doesn't diminish the sentiment.

Happy Christmas to all our readers.

P.S. Teddy Bear Bill says do you like his shepherds's outfit?

Love all at Bears Unlimited xxx

Busy Paws in Norfolk

What a busy week we are having. Our paws have been working non stop getting ready for Christmas. The biggest task is proving to be wrapping all the presents we have bought for each other and all our friends. We are spending several hours a day wrapping and still we haven't finished. Mind you, for us little bears managing metres of wrapping paper without wrapping ourselves up at the same time is quite difficult and some of us, who still have fur, have lost some of it to strips of sellotape which have seem to have a mind of their own.

It will all be worth it on Christmas Day when we get to start the serious business of unwrapping. However, we will enjoy the giving part, and watching our brothers and friends faces light up with pleasure, as much as we will the receiving.

One of our present tips, if you still have some to buy is the 'Crisis' Christmas pudding . Your loved one gets a fine Harrods Christmas pudding and you get to support the great work of Crisis including providing someone with a Christmas lunch!

Love the present wrapping crew xxxxx

Addition to the Norfolk Fleet

Amidst all the excitement of reporting George & Yorkie's Indian adventures we did not get round to telling you about the new addition to the Norfolk company fleet, which coincided with our return from India.

Sadly Bearmobile no.1 had come to the end of her life. She was a much loved car and had been with us many years, but after over 165,000 miles it was time for her to retire. It was very sad to say goodbye but we were pleased to welcome the replacement bearmobile 1 to the Briston bear cave.

The new Bearmobile 1 is a silver Astra estate and she has been receiving some loving attention from Chief Mechanic Blue Bear. Blue Bear has done a fantastic job of valeting and polishing and as a result BEAR M1 is looking really good.


The cold weather is not causing Blue Bear to neglect his duties and in today's photo we see him showing off the 2 spangly clean and shiny Norfolk fleet vehicles.

Lots of love from all at Bears Unlimited xxx

Christingle Time

One of favourite events in the run up to Christmas is the Christingle service. In fact this year we've been to two! We were especially impressed by the giant Christingle the Vicar used as his visual aid and it was certainly big enough to be seen from the back of the church. It was a medium sized pumpkin - very ingenious we thought. The Christingles which were lit and handed out to us all were, however, the traditional oranges.

We battled with temptation (to eat the sweets or not before we got home) throughout the service and are pleased to report our halos remained intact i.e. we resisted temptation. The ladies at Briston church, however, understood our dilemma and thoughtfully provided loose sweets at the door to keep us going until we got home.

Our first Christingles have shrivelled up but provided a fine aroma when burnt on our open fire. The second ones are still going strong and, as we wrap all our presents, remind us of what Christmas is really all about.

Lots of love Bris, Woolly & Noel xxx

O Christmas Tree ......

We're all in a Christmassy spirit today as this morning, after our regular aquarobic session, we went to pick up our Christmas tree. We trundled our tree home in the bearmobile trailer, then after a few critical measurements, we had to chop a bit off the bottom (sorry Christmas tree) as he was nearly 8 feet tall and therefore a bit tall for our lounge.

We got our tree inside just after lunch and had a lovely afternoon dressing him up. We all helped and the smaller bears did a lot of tree climbing to get some decorations right to the top.

We have some extra decorations this year as we bought some hand painted tree decorations while on holiday in Kerala last month. In our second picture you will see George & Yorkie, helped by Chelmer, hanging our 3 new Indian decorations (the camel, star and shooting star).



We are very proud of our tree and think he looks really fine. Mind you he'll look even better when he starts getting a few presents round him. We're getting very excited already!

Lots of love Ungi & the decorating team xxx

Yummy Yummy Yummy ...

We did say that reports from India had now finished but that doesn't mean that India is now a closed subject. I, Oakley Bear, am having a great time cooking with all the spices and recipe books that George & Yorkie brought back with them. Many of us at Bears Unlimited have a speciality country for cooking and mine is India.


The other day I spent all day conjuring up loads of delicious dishes. In the picture you can see me at the planning stage before it got all chaotic as my creative flair was exercised. The kitchen took quite a bit of cleaning afterwards but all my dishes were quickly despatched and I took the empty plates to be a sign of appreciation.

I did have 2 slight problems with my menu. My vegetable pakoras were supposed to be keeping warm in the top oven but instead they cooked for a second time and ended up rather black and burnt. Then my coconut ice cream set so solid that we couldn't get it out of the dish. We had to sit it by the fire for a good long while to allow it to soften.

We looked at photos and watched George & Yorkie's video as we ate our food and everyone declared it to be a great evening.

Lots of love, Chef Bear Oakley xxx

Closing Credits

Sadly we've come to the end of our tales and pictures of our Indian holiday. We hope you've enjoyed them and got the feel of what a fantastic holiday it was. We can't recommend southern India highly enough. Thank you to Explore for putting together such a great tour.

Our final picture shows us with Andrew our tour leader and the staff of the Rockholm hotel, Kovalam, on the last evening of our holiday. We tried to smile but it was very sad to be leaving.


The good news, however, is that our brothers in the Ipswich branch have recently returned from their holiday to New Zealand. We hope they will be able to share some of their photos and holiday experiences soon.

Keep reading the blog though as life is never dull with Bears Unlimited. We'll be taking a back seat as you've heard a lot from us recently but our friends have lots to tell you.

Lots of love, George & Yorkie xxx

Leech Attack!

There was one incident on our holiday that caused us bears particular amusement. We don’t have a laugh at our minders expense too often as they are very good to us, but there are occasions when it just can’t be helped.

The occasion in question was a ranger lead walk in the Periyar national park. We had to meet the ranger bright and early in the morning so as to have the best opportunity for animal sightings – we were particularly hoping to see a tiger. As it was the end of the monsoon season it was very damp and steamy in the park: ideal conditions for leeches. Our minders were therefore issued with some very peculiar leech socks, which completely covered them from knee to toe. They then put their shoes on which made them look really strange. We thought how lucky we were to have stuffing rather than blood and so be of no interest to leeches. We didn’t want to miss out on a photo opportunity though so we posed alongside a pair of leech socks.


We’d only taken a couple of steps and hadn’t even been rafted across the lake to the heart of the park before the leeches struck the humans. We found it fascinating watching them arching their way over our minders’ shoes looking for a way in through the laces.

It wasn’t long before we discovered the disadvantage of leech socks: they don’t cover the upper part of the body. Our female minder said she felt a tickling sensation on her stomach and when we had a look we discovered a leech had crawled up the inside of her shirt and firmly attached itself to her stomach. There was another two and a half hours of the walk to go which would have given the leech time to get very fat, so we thought we had better put a rescue plan into operation. We checked available resources and settled for a DEET (mosquito repellent) spray. This worked a treat, although we did feel a bit sorry for the leech! He soon let go and we were able to pull him off. Bears to the rescue yet again.

That was actually the most eventful part of the walk as there were few animal sighting – mainly just monkeys. When we got back to base our minders found the leech socks had worked a treat and their legs and ankles were leech free but their shoes were full of leeches. There were a tense few moments getting all the leeches out, but after we gave the ranger his tip he was very attentive and did a great job of clearing our shoes. Clearly all part of a day’s work if you’re a park ranger in India, but we’re not sure we fancy it.

Lots of love, George & Yorkie xxx

Tea for Two

Seeing how tea grows is of course only half the story and we saw little resemblance between the cuppa we enjoy several times a day and those healthy green bushes you saw us sitting in yesterday.

When we found a tea factory that was open to the public to visit we were therefore first in the queue to find out more about how tea leaves become tea. In fact as you will see from our picture we were there before the gates opened (yes you do have to look quite hard to see us but we are there).


We thought the Connemara tea factory sounded a bit Irish but it was definitely tea they were making not Guinness! It was a very noisy, dusty and hot process and we were a bit intrigued by all the fermentation going on - we didn't think tea had an alcoholic content!

Sadly there wasn't any tea sampling at the end of the visit but we did know a lot more about manufacturing tea than when we started.

Lots of love, George & Yorkie xxx

More Tea Vicar!

We think our bear radar might have detected a few readers asking, how come they've been all that time in India and not mentioned tea once?

Well the time has come to talk about tea. We like drinking tea almost as much as we like drinking Wherry (it all depends on the time of day) so we looked forward to visiting tea country on our trip. Our overwhelming impression was that tea bushes are very fortunate as they get to look out on some stunning views and spend their days soaking up the sun. Our cycle ride through tea country took us over the Western Ghats and boy did we want to store those fantastic mountain views in our minds to recall on cold, wet and dark days (like today). A second memorable thing about tea bushes was that we had never seen anything similar growing at home yet we've drunk Yorkshire tea on many occasions. Now, just where are those bushes growing in Yorkshire? We will have to look harder when we next visit.

The third memory we took away from our cycle through tea country was the chink chinking sound of the tea pickers' sheers providing a musical accompaniment as we pedalled along. The tea pickers, who all seemed to be friendly ladies, had some very innovative sheers. They had containers attached to them that the snipped tea leaves fell into so they didn't have to stop very often to collect what they had snipped.

We thought some of our readers might not have seen a tea bush growing so we thought we would take a picture of ourselves in a tea bush about to lend the ladies a hand with some tea leaf picking.


Love George & Yorkie xxx

Back Afloat Again

While it was great to try out some truly Indian forms of transport, a visit to Kerala is, more than anything else, about seeing the backwaters. As the backwaters stretch for about 1,000 km and there is so much to see on them - birds, animals, local industry and people simply living out their lives - you simply cannot spend too much time exploring and how better to explore the backwaters than by boat?

As we are boating bears, we were very happy to get back afloat. We didn't get to go on a traditional rice barge as none of our boat trips involved overnight stays which they are geared up for, but we were very happy with the boats we travelled on, especially when the masters of the vessels let us have a drive. We were pleased to find there aren't any speed limits like on the Norfolk Broads at home, but while we couldn't resist an occasional burst of speed (just to see what she could do) most of the time we drove like the responsible bears so as to get the best sightings of kingfishers and fish eagles.


The boat in today's photo had very thoughtfully provided safety straps to stop bears unwittingly slipping overboard. We thought this was a very nice touch.

Lots of love, George & Yorkie xxx

Travelling in Classic Style

When, earlier this year, our minders told us they were going to take us to India we started imagining what it would be like and doing some internet research to find out what to expect.

As we like to think we share personality characteristics with James Bond (I'm sure you can spot them) and the Top Gear presenters (we're sure we'll be invited on the show any day) we always pay particular attention to the car chase sequences in James Bond films.

After watching the James Bond film Octopussy, we fell in love with the Hindustani Ambassador and since then it has been our ambition to ride in one. We thought the chance might just come our way on our India trip so did a Google search on 'Hindustani Ambassador'. We just adore one of the quotes we found in someone's blog - the author was talking about a ride in an Ambassador.

''It is like traversing a crazy golf course on your granny's sofa, with added obstructions coming from flitting auto-rickshaws, wobbly, cycling Sikhs and toiling bullock carts''.

After reading this we made a pact that we wouldn't leave India without riding in an Ambassador. We hadn't bargained for there being so many around - they were everywhere and every single one was white. How we longed to take a can of spray paint to one of them to make it different! Was the ride worth waiting for? Yes it was. These are just such cool cars that we have yet another business venture to research for Bears Unlimited.

Love George & Yorkie xxxxx

On yer bike!

While our tuk-tuk driving was great fun we were keen to try some other authentic forms of Indian transport to maximise our travelling experiences. Also we weren't sure our nerves could stand too much more tuk-tuk driving for a while.

We had noticed that not many people owned cars but lots had small motorbikes. To blend in with the locals which we were keen to do, to experience the real India we thought we would try a day on a motorbike.

What we found wouldn't have done our image much good at home but it was perfect for India where practical considerations win over style. Had we had the bike for longer we would have liked to paint it a more vibrant colour but we compensated by putting on some bright clothes when we were ready to go. We also put on our cycle helmets as we weren't too sure about the Indian practice of riding without a helmet.

The bit we really liked about the motorbike was that we were able to go fast enough to keep us cool, this counts for a lot in a country as hot and humid as southern India.

Love George & Yorkie xxx

"Driving in my Tuk -Tuk"

One thing you should know about us members of Bears Unlimited is that we always keep our promises. We have therefore, not forgotten that, a while ago, we promised to report on our tuk-tuk driving lesson. If you've been waiting for this report your patience will now be rewarded.

As we've told you, our tour leader, Andrew, was very kindly disposed to bears. He appreciated that we couldn't do quite as much cycling as the rest of the group in view of our rather short legs, so arranged a number of alternative forms of transport for us to complement our cycling.

We simply loved our tuk-tuk driving lesson - really we should call it an auto rickshaw as that's what they're called in India, but we prefer to call them tuk-tuks. We simply cannot understand why they are not all the rage at home as they are such fun, and we are seriously considering importing them as a new Bears Unlimited business venture.

Most of the tuk-tuks in the area were black and gold in colour but we got to drive in a special blue one, complete with L plates. We got our vehicle started fairly easily and checked the horn was working, as our instructor told us that the most important tip he could give us was to use the horn at every opportunity as most drivers don't obey any rules of the road. As we took to the streets this became quite apparent and we began to wonder why every driver in India doesn't have L plates as most don't appear to have had any lessons!

Mastering the tuk-tuk controls didn't take us very long and once we had established that the best way to get anywhere was to drive like a maniac so we would fit in with the traffic flows, we were well away and left our cycling minders far behind. In fact we had finished a bottle of Kingfisher in a local restaurant before they caught up!



Lots of love, George & Yorkie xxx (beep beep!)