We Pay Our Respects to a Local Hero

We couldn't spend time in Coniston without paying our respects to one of our heroes, Donald Campbell, especially as we enjoy the Coniston Brewery's Bluebird Bitter, named after him, so much.

His story captured our imagination after we found out that he used to carry a bear with him as a mascot. His bear had the rather unusual name of Mr Woppit - we'd love to know where that name came from. While we think Donald Campbell's death on Lake Coniston was extremely tragic, we can't tell you how relieved we were when we discovered that Mr Woppit survived the crash and was recovered from the floating debris. We would have hated the thought of Mr Woppit drowning at the bottom of a cold dark lake.


The Donald Campbell memorial in Coniston was just across the road from our B&B. We therefore got day 2 off on the right footing by spending a respectful minute's silence at the memorial.

Lots of love George, Isaiah, Yorkie, Dale & Wooly

Are We There Yet?

Having had a hearty cooked breakfast, we can't really claim to have been too hungry at lunch time, but it was good to have an excuse to rest and to admire the rural landscape. Yorkie also took the opportunity to do a bit of ear cleaning with his banana stalk (we can't take him anywhere!!)


After lunch we left farmland behind and the terrain became more rugged and typical of the Lakeland fells. This was the scenery we had set out to see and we began to feel very satisfied although a little worried about the long way we still had to go that day.

Fortunately the sun kept shining and we passed some lovely bubbling becks. Some had some really good bridges, as in our next picture. These are great for bears as when there are no bridges we often find we have to pole vault across streams that our minders simply step across.


The last 5 or so miles were along the shore of Lake Coniston. This is our favourite Lake District lake and holds a lot of happy memories for us. Unfortunately there wasn't time to linger as the Bluebird bitter in the Coniston Black Bull was beckoning. The shoreline path enabled us to speed up our progress but we all took some time out to admire the double rainbow which appeared over the lake.


It was a long first day's walk but a good one. We were very glad to put our feet up in the B & B and have a hot shower and a snooze before strolling to the Black Bull for a well earned pint (or two!)

Lots of love, George, Isaiah, Wooly & team xxx

Those Paws are Made for Walking

We all love the great outdoors, so our high spirits continued as we completed the first mile and the walk got properly underway.

Wooly showed a clean pair of heels over the stiles with us following, a bit slower, but with no less enthusiasm.


Wooly pointed out that his legs were actually shorter than Isaiah's and mine but there must be something genetic in his sheep make up which sped him along faster than us.

Our progress was slower than it might have been, not because of short legs, but because of the weather which couldn't make up it's mind what it was doing. One minute it was hot and sunny, the next cool and cloudy and there were a few brief showers.

This wasn't a problem for us bears and Wooly as we all have all purpose all weather fur/wool, but it was a problem for our minders who were forever changing their clothes - waterproofs on then off, zip off touser legs zipped off then on, and so on.


We made the most of the waiting time to look behind us and admire the views across Morecombe Bay. Please believe us, the weather wasn't as dismal as it looks in this picture; it was nice day - we just hadn't got the right light for our picture.

All too soon it was time for lunch. Keep reading for the afternoon's progress.

Lots of love, the Cumbria Way walkers xxx

On Your Marks ...

Our walk started on a fine Monday morning. We were all raring to go but we had to wait for, not one, but two sets of minders to fiddle with equipment, adjust rucksack straps, extend trekking poles and so on. It's much simpler being a bear, or sheep, as we travel very light and take just ourselves.

Our secret weapon was Wooly who is a genuine Lakeland sheep. He came to Bears Unlimited from his previous home in Ambleside on a previous B.U. trip to the Lake District. He was therefore the perfect guide for us and with him as our leader we hardly ever needed to refer to a map.

We waited for our minders at the official start. It was rather unglamorous, being at the exit of Ulverston's central car park, but we had the pleasant sound of tinkling water behind us and we had sunny spot to linger in.


While we were waiting we chatted to a man who lived in the house in the top right corner of our photo. He told us that he'd walked the Cumbria Way twice, once with his wife, which he said took forever, and once with some army friends when they completed the 75 mile route in 2 days!!! We were stunned to learn that anyone could travel that fast and we knew that we'd need every minute of the 5 days allocated to complete the trail.

Eventually our minders joined us and we set off with a spring in our step and lots of enthusiasm. Did it last? Keep reading to find out.

Lots of love, George, Isaiah, Yorkie, Dale and Wooly xxx

Who Can Lend Us a Foot Spa?

Hello again to our loyal readers. We're all safely back from our latest adventure and happily re-united with the rest of our Bears Unlimited friends.

If the title hasn't given you a clue as to what we got up to last week our next picture should!


Yes, we've been walking and we've covered around 85 miles in 5 days. Not bad you say, but it has taken it's toll on Yorkie and myself, which is why we're soaking our aching and blistered paws and trying to find someone who can lend us a foot spa. Wooly who walked with us is absolutely fine as his hooves are built to withstand walking over some rough terrain.

Hopefully we're whetting your appetite and you're all eager to know where we went walking. In case the fact that Wooly joined us as a walking companion, is not enough of a clue, the following picture will leave you in no doubt.


We've done a mammoth walk in the Lake District, completing the Cumbria Way, which runs from Ulverston in the south of Cumbria, to Carlisle in the north. Rather optimistically the guide books claim it is a 75 mile walk but our GPS's tell us we've walked several miles further and we think the guides forget that land in the Lake District is not flat!

We're looking forward to sharing our pictures and tales with you over the next few days. In case you're wondering where the Suffolk Branch, who were sharing this adventure with us are, they're only travelling back from Keswick today, but you'll be seeing them as the story of our adventure unfolds.

We can't wait to share it with you.

Lots of love, George, Yorkie & Wooly

Not Bored at Our Board Meeting

Last weekend there was a mass gathering of Bears Unlimited members at the Norfolk Branch office. As always happens when the Norfolk, Suffolk and Midlands branches get together, a party atmosphere prevails and we all have a great time.

Several members of the visiting branches stayed on for a Board meeting. Although much serious business is discussed we all enjoy attending, probably because we are all so actively engaged in our business and are all very proud of all that Bears Unlimited does and stands for.


As you will see from our board room table we have frequent breaks for Fair Trade chocolate/hazelnut spread sandwiches and a glass of a Woodforde's brewery brew. This week we sampled both Wherry and Sundew.

One of the items on the agenda was George & Yorkie's travel budget. They were applauded for being under budget so far this year, so the Board was happy to authorise the money required for their latest trip.

In fact a higher budget than usual was approved to allow members of the Suffolk branch to travel with George & Yorkie. The most obvious companions for them are George's brother Isaiah and Yorkie's brother Dale.

As the next adventure starts tomorrow, we'll introduce you to the travel party so you don't feel as if you're seeing double when their reports start coming in.

First up are George (on the left) and Isaiah - what a handsome pair they make.


Then we have Yorkie, looking as if he's consumed a bit too much of that Wherry, and his brother Dale.


Kiwi and Tiny will also be joining them but you'll know them straight away when you see them.

We'll almost certainly be off air for a few days but we hope you'll enjoy the posts when we're back.

Lots of love, from the Bears Unlimited Board xxx

Beer, a Woman and Song

Our last evening in Poland was rather satisfying. We went to a very traditional restaurant in the Jewish quarter (of Oscar Schindler fame) and had a lovely meal with our own personal music group playing a concert of klezmer music just for us.


We were enthralled, not only by the music, but also by the rather lovely young lady who played the violin exquisitely and sang equally well. Sadly for us we found out she was married, but then we wouldn't want to betray our own bear kind anyway, and, as our friend Naughty Bear is finding out in Chicago, flirting is more fun anyway! Flushed with the success of our recent video clip, we'd like to try another, so that you can share some of this unique experience with us.



The only potential downside of the evening was a worrying moment when we got bearnapped while our minders had gone off to view the sweet trolley. It must say something about them that they were the only 2 of a group of 17 who had sweets! Anyway, one of our fellow cyclists who had observed how much we mean to our minders, thought it would be amusing to separate us and hid us on top of a side board type affair.


Rather than make a fuss, we decided to go along with the joke as we weren't exactly well hidden and we would have shouted loud if they'd tried to go off without us. The rather galling thing was that when they came back after selecting their sweets they didn't notice we were missing! It was only when they came to pay the bill that they noticed we were missing, and we were gratified to see that there was a bit of a panic then. We were soon spotted and re-united.

As we walked back to the hotel after a final beer in the main square, we were informed by an electronic display that the outside temperature, at midnight, was 29 degrees C. So if you want to head for the sun, forget the Med and travel to Poland as you get a great country to explore to boot. We hope you've enjoyed our Polish adventures, but don't worry, you won't be deprived of our travel reports for long as we're off again very soon. Lots of love, George & Yorkie xxx

Going Underground

While we like to explore in our own bear fashion and try to avoid the crowds at the main tourist sites, on the last day of our holiday we did feel find ourselves going with the flow and catching a minibus to one of Krakow's main tourist attractions, the Wieliczka salt mines.

Our tour started with a long descent underground down a seemingly never ending stairwell. It felt like a Jules Verne Journey to the Centre of the Earth type of adventure. We were descending where thousands of miners had been before us, the mines having been worked since the thirteenth century. This makes them really old. As well as their age, the mines have another major claim to fame. This is the sheer scale of the underground excavations. There are 9 levels (tourist only visit the top 3 for which our legs were grateful), underground lakes and over 2,000 chambers.

Although visitors only get to see 30 of the chambers there is still a lot of walking involved so you need to be fit.


Being small pawed bears, this was a bit daunting and we got quite excited when we found a railway engine and we leapt in thinking this would be a good way to travel between the chambers. However, good mechanics as we are, we just couldn't get it started. Somehow we don't think it had been anywhere for quite a few years.

So what did we see at each of the chambers? We got to see the most amazing sculptures all carved out of salt by former miners. The most impressive is the chapel of Saint Kinga which is a large and very beautiful subterranean church completely carved out of salt. Even the chandeliers are salt carvings.

And guess who we saw at the entrance to this church?


It was Pope John Paul II, who quite literally gets everywhere in Krakow. Having come across him so often on our trip, he felt like an old friend so we joined him for a photo.

Lots of love George & Yorkie xxx

Walking in Famous Footsteps

As we continued our cycle tour of Krakow we found we kept encountering a former resident whose fame far surpasses that of the Krakow dragon. This gentleman died in April 2005 at the age of 84 but he wasn't living in Poland when he died. Do you know who we're talking about?


Our picture provides a clue. We're sitting above his crest which is now displayed at the Jagiellonian University of Krakow to commemorate his time there as a student of philosophy.

In case the penny hasn't dropped we'll make it even easier.


Here you see us doing what many thousands of people have done before us. We're sitting outside the rooms, from which he used to work when he was Archbishop of Krakow, looking at a painting of him. You may need to enlarge our picture to see it clearly, but if you do you will see we are looking at a picture of Karol Wojtyla, more commonly known as Pope John Paul II.

To the Poles he was, and still is, a hero, and we can certainly vouch for the fact that you can't travel very far in Krakow without encountering a statue, or some other memorial to him. Even so, we were stil amazed to hear from Jakub, our guide, that after his death this road was closed for several months due to all the floral offerings that were left there. We thought it must have been similar response to that of the British nation after the death of Princess Diana.

We can hardly think of two more different people!

Lots of love George & Yorkie xxx

Maidens to be Rescued

We may have returned to Krakow, but it wasn't quite the end of the cycling. The city lends itself quite well to exploration by cycle, and we saw some great sights on our cycle tour.

As we approached the Vistula River, we came across the Krakow dragon guarding his cave. Nowadays he is a huge metal fire breathing structure, but in his heyday he was a real terror and brought great fear to the neighbourhood as he chased and, more often than not killed, livestock and young ladies, virgins being his particular favourites.

Can you see us in our picture? We'll give you a clue, we're as far as we can be from his fiery breath.

Our guide Jakub told us the story of the dragon. A local shoemaker's apprentice, named Krakus, rid his people of the dragon by a clever ruse involving using a sheep as bait and sulphur paste. To cut a long story short, when the dragon ate the sulphur coated sheep, he developed such a thirst that he drank enough water to swell him up to a size which caused him to burst and die. There was a great rejoicing and Krakus was hailed a hero. In fact he became Prince Kakus and the city which became Krakow was named after him.

We were lucky that during our short visit the dragon breathed real fire for us. Apparently, if you turn up at night, you can sometimes wait a long time to see him breathe fire, but there is an option to text the dragon from your mobile phone and set off the fire breathing. We think it it worth seeing, and rather than have our readers miss out, we're going to attempt a first (for us) in our blog and include a video clip of our friend, the Krakow dragon, breathing his fire. Hope it works and you like it.



Lots of love, George & Yorkie xxx

Back to the Bright Lights

The next day started off with an ascent to a ruined castle that was too steep for bikes so we had to approach on two legs. We could see for miles and the views were well worth the climb. At least having a good view to admire does give tired legs a chance to recover.


When it came to lunch, remembering our healthy fish supper of the night before, we decided to continue to be good and declined a cauldron of delicious bigos is favour of a virtuous salad. Note the beer in the background though - there's only so far you can go with a health kick!


Mind you, you've got to admit it was a rather splendid salad. If they made salads like this at home we'd eat salad more regularly than as an annual event.

After lunch, sadly it was time to leave the charms of rural Poland and head back to Krakow. It's tempting to pretend to you that we pedalled all the way back, but you'd quickly realise that with only a salad to sustain us we wouldn't get very far. We'll therefore reveal the true way our two wheeled steeds returned to the city. Can you find us in the picture? It's a bit like hunting for Bear!


As it was once again baking hot, it was very tempting to travel back to Krakow perched on our saddles but our minders said it wouldn't be safe and they'd miss our company in the minibus. We therefore decided to humour them and join them in the bus.

Lots of love George & Yorkie xxx

An Evening of Fish and Accordian Playing

We know all our readers have very agile minds and therefore will have no problems returning to our Polish adventures, which we temporarily abandoned to report on even more exciting adventures at Greenbelt.

Back in Poland, one night we stayed at a very nice hotel on the banks of a river. It had been very hot all day and we'd been promised fresh trout, cooked over a camp fire, that evening, so the river had two very important purposes: firstly cooling down opportunities and secondly the opportunity to catch our supper.


You see both going on in our photo, but you will have to look very hard! Our minder was having a swim while we were perched on a rock getting ready to cast our lines. Actually we were politely asking our minder not to splash so much as we didn't want him to scare the fish.

Fortunately, a nice lady from the hotel came out and told us that they already had more than enough fish for everyone, even very hungry bears, so we needn't worry about catching any more.

After our delicious fish and smoked sausage supper, we had a bit of musical entertainment. Now we told you recently that bears are great singers, but did you know our musical talents extend far beyond singing?


Ever since Yorkie and I learnt that we were going to Poland, we started having secret accordian lessons as it seemed a very Polish thing to do, and we wanted to surprise everyone on the trip with our prowess on this great instrument.

While we picked up accordian playing fairly quickly (as a double act as neither of us could manage it on our own), unfortunately our teacher back in England didn't know any Polish songs, so we rattled through a few non Polish numbers such as When the Saints Go Marching In and Waltzing Matilda before handing the accordian back to our Polish leader Jakub for some real Polish songs.

What a great evening.

Lots of love George & Yorkie xxx

Bears Like Singing!

Talking about Greenbelt with our friend Bear and you, our readers, has reminded us of another Greenbelt style occasion which took place a couple of months ago and which we haven't told you about yet (as you'll have noticed, there are very few respites for home blogging between George & Yorkie's adventures!)


The occasion involved three bear friendly people. Cwti (pronounced Cooti and yes, we have spelt it right) and Andrew, on the edges of the picture, were the main players and Joanna in the middle had organised the event at Binham Priory where she is the vicar.

Cwti and Joanna know each other from a time when they were both members of the Iona community in Scotland. This might give you a clue as to what the event was. Yes, it was a Big Sing. The link with Greenbelt is that the Big Sing at Greenbelt is something of an institution, and thousands (literally), including a good number of bears, gather every year in the stands at Cheltenham racecourse and make a joyful and tremendous noise, under the leadership of John Bell of the Iona Community and friends.

Cwti and Andrew are Greenbelt Big Sing regulars so know what songs go down well, and while our Big Sing at Binham involved only a couple of dozen singers, rather than thousands, it was every bit as exciting and fantastic fun.


We sang lively songs where we couldn't keep our paws still, and contemplative songs and African songs and songs from Iona and a whole lot more. We were in our element, which just goes to prove that bears really do like singing. We also enjoyed a lovely bring and share lunch over which we reminisced about last year's Greenbelt with Cwti and Andrew.

The only downside was the fact that there are no loos at Binham Priory. Popping out to find a quiet spot in the fresh air is also a little difficult when a coachload of tourists turns up - the ancient Priory ruins attracting quite a few visitors. It was a good job we were all boy bears!

We saw Andrew and Cwti at Greenbelt last week and they said they would be returning to Norfolk for another big sing sometime soon. We eagerly await it.

Lots of love, the Bears Unlimited singers xxx