Friends Re-united

What a wonderful Christmas we've had. The snowed cleared sufficiently for members of the other B.U. branches to arrive safely in Norfolk - some on Christmas Eve, others on Christmas Day - and once we were all together the fun really started.

Of course we remembered exactly whose birth we were celebrating, when we all crowded into the pews for church services, at midnight on Christmas Eve, and again on Christmas morning.


As you can see, there was no shortage of presents round the tree: bears simply love giving and receiving presents, and as we all know each other so well, we know exactly what to buy. We can't understand why humans find it so hard to find just the right present.

In fact, our present mountain was so big, we managed to lose (temporarily!) smaller bears, George and Yorkie in the present mound. We also had to have several instalments of present opening, breaking off for such important things as eating our Christmas dinner. Chef Oakley had once again excelled himself by cooking, Tina, our locally farmed, succulent Norfolk black turkey, to perfection, and there were plenty of sprouts to go round, another bear favourite.

On Boxing Day the sun shone and we went out for our traditional ramble, and we ate lots more and played lots of games. The Suffolk Branch had brought their W.I.I. we gave us hours of fun.

But far and away, the most important thing was that we were all able to be together. Bears never fall out at Christmas, and love nothing better than to be in each other's company (preferably with a beer and a big box of chocolate biscuits!).


You're probably used to seeing double, sometimes triple, when the various branches get together. Here you see the phenomenon yet again, with this picture of some of the gang, re-united with brothers and sisters from other branches.

We hope all our readers had an equally good time, and we wish you all a very Happy New Year.

Lots of love, all at Bears Unlimited xxx

Lots of Reasons to Celebrate!

We're returning (post wise) from the heat of Egypt to a snowy and frozen Norfolk to share 2 happy events with you.

The first is the news that this is our 500th post! Who'd have thought, when we tentatively published our first post some 3 years ago, that our blog would survive long enough to reach 500 posts. Not only is it still going, but we feel it still has a lot to offer, and we still enjoy writing it - so long may it continue. We will be getting the festive season off to a jolly start with a celebratory party tonight.

We're also looking forward to the arrival of 3 Bears Unlimited branches over the next couple of days and celebrating Christmas en masse. Our tree went up last weekend and Randolph has been diligently keeping him well watered with the cold contents of his tummy.


When the snow arrived in Norfolk last week, we began to feel really Christmassy. We have been out in the snow most days making snow bears and snow angels - this is the reason we're all flat on our backs in the next photo, not because we've had a drop too much!


During this cold snap we've also been remembering to keep the bird feeders topped up with food, as it is a very difficult time for our feathered friends, and we want them to have a happy, not a hungry, Christmas.


Marmaduke is a special friend of our local birds as he is out every day to check that supplies don't run too low. We hope you are doing the same.

We hope all our readers have a very happy and peaceful Christmas and will raise a glass, not only to celebrate Christmas, but also our 500th post.

Lots of love, all at Bears Unlimited xxx

Come Fly a Kite

As well as helping out on the operations desk, we also helped look after the equipment. Sometimes we were getting it out, to be used by eager punters, sometimes we were putting it away. You will find us in our next picture if you look hard.


Everything was really well looked after which we fully appreciated: after all, equipment that lasts, because it is well cared for, ultimately means lower prices for eager holiday makers like us, and that's definitely a good thing.

Being small bears, we did find the windsurfer boards a bit heavy to manoeuvre, but we had no problems with the sails, and we soon became experts in selecting the right sail to match a person's physique, experience and the prevailing conditions.


As a thank you for all our hard work, we were given some free kite surfing lessons. Potentially this could be a dangerous sport - the exhilarating ones often are - so it was important to learn how to fly a kite safely on land first.

Here I, George, am, demonstrating how it's done on the simulator.


Even the simulator was exciting enough to make my fur stand on end. The real thing - well it was completely mind, and fur, blowing.

Lots of love, George & Yorkie xxx

Flagging and Tagging

We really liked all the Mark Warner staff, they were simply great. We enjoyed talking to them and getting the benefit of their extensive knowledge of sailing and windsurfing. They were a mine of useful information and great fun.

We also enjoyed helping out with some of the jobs they do. Our favourite was manning the operations desk.


This was where you go to take out a boat, a canoe or some windsurfing kit. Mark Warner operates a flag and tag system and we quickly got familiar with it. The flag tells you the strength of the wind and the type of experience needed for the conditions ...


... this blue flag meant windy conditions suitable for experienced sailors. We were happier when the green flag was flying, as this meant conditions suitable for beginners.

As people came to us for boats, we gave them a wristband and recorded their name and room number, and the equipment they were taking, on the whiteboard. As wristbands were returned, we cleared the details. It was a great way of getting to know people and we were pleased to be able to help out.

Lots of love George & Yorkie xxx

A Life On The Ocean Wave

Once we had mastered the basics of windsurfing - which took us a whole week - it was time to turn our attention to sailing. This was a bit more scary as you can't just drop your sail and jump off your board if you get into difficulties, as you can with windsurfing.

We therefore paid lots of attention to the instruction given on the simulators ...


... as we wanted to get our tacks and gybes to be flowing seamlessly before we took to the water. The laser Pico was a lovely small boat, perfect for bears, but being particularly small bears, it took two of us to handle the boat: one to take the tiller and the other the main sheet. They perform beautifully, and look good on the water, as our minder who was learning with us kindly demonstrates.


It was important to avoid the crashes that can easily happen when a group of learners take to the same stretch of water and the wind gets up. We therefore all made sure we had learnt the rules of the road ...


There was an awful lot to take in but we had a good time learning. We even enjoyed our capsize drills: once deliberately and once accidentally!

Lots of love George & Yorkie xxx

Windsurfing is Magic

As many of our readers will know, we do have some water sports expertise within Bears Unlimited, but it doesn't lie with me and Yorkie. It is Eddie who is the chief boating bear, but unfortunately he was too busy running his seal boat to join us on this holiday.

Yorkie and I had to learn to sail and windsurf from scratch. Fortunately this was no problem for the excellent Mark Warner staff, and they had just the right courses to help us to learn enough to get out on the water and have some fun.


In our first week we tackled windsurfing. There were several simulators which allowed us to practise our moves on dry land. This one was a bit big for us, although look closely and you will see us trying to master it. We used this one to practise our gybes and the ones with sails attached we used for other manouevres.

It wasn't long, mere minutes in fact, before we were out on the Red Sea, joing the band of other novice windsurfers.


It might look dead calm but there was more than enough wind to make us feel we were going very fast. We weren't too worried about falling off as the sea was nice and shallow and lovely and warm. Strangely enough, because we weren't bothered about falling off, we actually managed to stay on the board most of the time.

Eddie would have been proud of us.

Lots of Love George & Yorkie xxx

As Active As You Want to Be

As we strolled along the beach for the first time we began to get quite excited when we saw the sign we were looking for ...


... this was because we were on a Mark Warner holiday where you can do lots of lovely watersports for free. It is all optional and we thoroughly approved of their slogan of 'As active as you want to be'. There were a few times when we were happy just to relax in the sun - here we are being really chilled out bears -


- but most of the time we were on, or in, the water, trying out all the different gear.

We'll let you see us in action next time.

Lots of love George & Yorkie xxx

Wafted to Paradise

We would have liked to have done a few more 'live' posts from Egypt, but unfortunately circumstances conspired against us. Our Poddy was no use to us for blogging, as although the hotel had wi-fi, it had no method of allowing guests to use it, and the £6 per hour internet connection was so slow that we only got about 10 minutes effective use, making posting rather expensive.

We're now safely back home and able to tell you all about our Egyptian adventure. We were staying at a veritable paradise and we're almost afraid to show you some of our pictures, as we think they might make you rather envious of us, and make you want to leave cold, wet England to fly right there. But here goes, lets give you a taste of where we were staying.


This was the view from our balcony. The bay you can see was not where we sailed, it was the bay where the kite surfing took place. What a spectator sport that was!

Although it wasn't far to the beach, if we fancied cooling off before we got there, we only had to take a few steps to reach the first of the hotel's 3 pools.


Waterfalls, bridges and rock formations provided lots of interest.

But we were really there for the beach and all that goes on there in the way of watersports. As soon as we saw the blue sea, sand, palm trees, loungers and wicker parasols we knew we were going to have a good holiday ...


... and that was before we'd seen any of the boats.

Lots of love George & Yorkie xxx

It's a Very Blue Red Sea

Greetings from the land of camels, Pharaohs, sun and the Red Sea. As you can see from our first picture, the camels are quite frisky beasts and do need a firm paw. Even the locals need a bit of a hand to keep them under control.


Perhaps you have guessed that we are reporting in from Egypt, more precisely from the 5* Intercontinental hotel at Abu Soma.

We are here to make the most of our Minders' remaining sabbatical time, before they return to work, and we are doing rather more than lazing round in the Egyptian sun. This is a watersports holiday, and where better to learn to windsurf and sail, than the beautiful waters of the Red Sea. One of our minders is learning to sail and windsurf from scratch and the other is honing skills and learning how to sail cats (the twin hulled variety, not the furry kind).

There are loads of lovely boats to choose from, and here are just a few of the selection, just pulled out of the water. Being small bears we like these yellow fun boats, but we are also finding the Laser Picos lots of fun.


We're all having a wonderful time and look forward to telling you about it all in lots of detail soon.

Lots of love George & Yorkie xxx

Up and Away Again

We've been busy bears since our early return from Spain. Infact, we've hardly spent any time at all at home. We've had a lovely time visiting friends and family all over the country and enjoying some wonderful hospitality.

You know us though, it doesn't take us long to get itchy paws and we thought about how best we could use our minders' remaining sabbatical time for a new adventure and a new chapter for the Friendly Planet Guide. We made our decision and then realised that, although the bearports were still valid, one of them expired less than 6 months after the return from our planned holiday. It therefore needed renewing and quickly.

We therefore wasted no time in leaping into one of the bearmobiles and heading for the Passport Office at Peterborough. We found it in plenty of time for our appointment slot.


Thanks to the helpfulness and efficiency of the very nice staff, we were sorted in no time at all and free to look round the city of Peterborough.

We headed for the Cathedral and were very pleased to find that it wasn't locked a la Spanish style and even wanted people to come and visit. This was a notice we approved of.


We returned home to get on with trip preparations and packing.

In fact since starting to write this blog at Gatwick airport we have travelled a few thousand miles and are now at our trip destination. All we will say for now is that we are having fun getting wet in the sun.

More will be revealed soon (but perhaps not too soon with internet rates of 6 pounds stirling an hour - we're sure you'll understand).

Lots of love George & Yorkie xxx

The Not So Good Bits

We don't want to dwell on the lowlights of walking the Camino too much, but there are just a few we want to get off our chest and we are sure we will feel much better for it.

1. Our biggest bugbear, locked churches. Spain was much more of a culprit than France. It really made us growl to find, time after time, locked churches, bang on one of the world's most famous pilgrimage routes. They were even locked on Sunday.


Here was all too familiar example.

And then, on the rare occasions we did get in, we found the amount of gold and ornate decoration quite off-putting ...


... or we'd sit through a service conducted entirely in Spanish, or French, with the only words spoken in English, being a warning that non Catholics were not welcome at the Communion table ... more growls.

2. Plastic Pilgrims. Our hackles really rose when we encountered able bodied 'pilgrims' not bothering to put the effort into walking, but taking regular short cuts by bus, while pretending to be walkers. It's a good job we don't know names, but the 2 hot water bottle girls will know who they are (not that they're likely to ever read this blog). It was also disappointing to find the Le Puy route in France so busy, especially with groups of daysack walkers with full vehicle support. This put pressure on the accommodation so that it was necessary to book ahead. We didn't want to have to do this, not only because of the language difficulties, but also because we wanted the freedom to take each day as it came and stop when we were ready, rather than at a place determined in advance.

3. There were some stretches in Spain that needed a bit more scenery and something to look at other than a bit of soil. We were also not too keen on the 'sendas' (paths running alongside main roads) such as this one ...


... as we much preferred to get further away from the traffic.

4. Ipods going to sleep and not waking up. We were quite reliant on our Ipods for blogging, music, games and electronic books, so it was a real disappointment to see a screen looking like this ...


... not once, but twice, once on each Ipod. As the only solution was to reconnect to the parent computer several hundred miles away, it was very frustrating, although it was good to be able to call on the hammer treatment from Fred of the Suffolk Branch.

Thankfully, we have now loaded the software fix so hopefully, when we return to Spain to finish the walk, this problem should not occur.

And finally ... there was the rather big lowlight of not being able to finish to walk this year due to our minder's stress fracture. This was a whimper, rather than a growl, as it wasn't his fault. On the positive side it means we can all look forward to some more Camino walking before too long.

Lots of love, the Camino Bears xxx

Reflections on St James and ... Caterpillars

So far, in our highlights, we've mostly talked about things which were incidental to our pilgrimage, albeit very welcome accoutrements (we do like that word!). But after all, our walk was, first and foremost, a pilgrimage, so how was the actual pilgrimage in the highlights stakes?

We've already mentioned the pleasure we had meeting fellow pilgrims and of course, had we been able to make it to Santiago this trip, arrival at Santiago cathedral would have undoubtedly been a highlight, even though, because of swine flu, we couldn't have kissed St James' feet!

We really did like all the reminders along the way that the route we were walking was more than just another 'GR' path. Because the Camino is the way of St James, and his emblem is the scallop shell, the path was frequently adorned with scallops which came in all materials, shapes and sizes. In terms of natural scallops, we thought this wall was pretty special as it was covered in scallops, many of which had pilgrim names and messages written on to them.


As for man made scallops, we really liked these metal ones which did wonders to what would otherwise have been a rather dull path, leading into the city of Logrono.


While the scallop shell was a potent reminder of St James, there was nothing quite like seeing him in the 'flesh', or should we say nuts and bolts.


This was our favourite image of him made out of old car parts: spot his exhaust pipe staff!

I (Giovanni) was lucky enough to have my own pilgrim's passport, in which I, along with my minders collected stamps from the places we stayed along the way. It was a very special moment for me when I received my first stamp from the cathedral at Le Puy.


I was so proud to be finally officially starting this great walk, which we'd been planning for years, that I had to have a picture taken with my first stamp. By the time we stopped, I had many pages of stamps, at least one for every day of our trip, and I can hardly wait for the time when we will return to Spain to complete the walk to Santiago, as we will then be able to exchange our passports for Compostellas.

We'll be back soon, to tell you a few of the disappointments we experienced along the way - there always have to be downsides. Sorry if we've gone about this the wrong way round, as we really should be ending on a positive note.

For now, at least we can end positively with a favourite picture of ours. It doesn't belong in this post and should have been included in the last one, in the food and drink highlights section, but we forgot it. We want to include it now, as we were extremely appreciative of this special camino fuel, sent all the way from England to the French town of Condom.


We will always be very grateful to Fred's Mum for the wonderful parcel of marshmallow Colin caterpillars she posted to us. You can see from our photo how much we enjoyed them.

Back soon, love from the Camino bears xxx

Camino Highlights Part 2

We could extol the virtues of the Camino for hours, but the rest of the Norfolk branch say we must be succinct, and that highlights does mean the best bits. Bearing this in mind let us continue.

In this post we want to include some of the quirky aspects of the trip, but first we simply must mention food and drink.

Rarely have we eaten so well and enjoyed such good wine and beer. Unfortunately most of the time we were too busy eating to think about taking photos, so have little photographic evidence. It is strange that, although we would say we dined better in France, two of our highlight pictures belong to Spain.


The first we have mentioned previously, and it is the Irache wine fountain. Free wine and fine tasting wine, not some inferior plonk - what more is there to say, except that we loved it. Thank you Bodegas Irache.


But, as our second picture shows, we did drink things other than wine. We all loved big steaming glasses of cafe con leche. Gio drank it as often as he could, but Yorkie and I liked to slip in an occasional Spanish brandy.

We turn now to artwork along the way. Even though we passed through some wonderful scenery, we were always excited when we came across a new installation. Here are some of our favourites ...


Ermintrude was no ordinary cow on the Aubrac plateau. When you pulled her tail, she nodded her head. We tried not to do it too much in case it annoyed her, but it was irresistible.


We had great fun being part of this pilgrimage montage on the top of windmill hill, more properly known as Alto de Perdon. There were some huge wind turbines turning quite close to us, which tells you we had climbed to a high point and it was windy.

We're not normally city bears, preferring the big outdoors instead, but we did enjoy Pamplona, especially taking part in our very own enactment of the bull run.


You would all have been very proud of us. We sat, as cool as cucumbers, just inches from those thundering hooves and we didn't flinch at all!

Back soon, as once again this post is going on far too long.

Love from the Camino Bears xxx

Our Camino Highlights

Our walk along the Camino was our trip of a liftime, and before the memories fade too much, we want to share some of the highlights with you all.

1. At the top of the list is the wonderful new friends we made. All the lovely encounters we enjoyed made the pilgrimage so much more than an ordinary walk. Despite all our cultural and language differences, our shared identity as pilgrims, gave us so much in common and broke across all the barriers.


Here is Luc from Belgium, one of our special friends, who we hope to see on one of his frequent visits to England.

2. We will always remember some of the marvellous accommodation we stayed in.

One of our favourites in France was the gite Montalibet in a small village called Lichos.


It was a lovely old stone building and was owned by some special people who invited us to use their swimming pool and sun loungers and gave us aperitifs and a superb meal. We then retired to bed on a characterful mezzanine floor.

In Spain we thought the albergue at Boadilla was rather special. We could see why it was called 'Shangrila' in Travels with my Donkey'.


The accommodation was in the grounds of some former farm buildings and many historical features had been retained including a pair of threshing sledges. The grounds were simply delightful as you can see from our pictures and our host was a charming Spaniard who was great fun.



3. We enjoyed walking through some wonderful scenery, especially in France.


We loved the alpine scery and the Aubrac plaeau which reminded us quite a lot of Derbyshire.

4. We passed through some delightful villages with some great photogenic qualities. Two of the finest were Espallion ...


... and Estaing ...


It was a shame we passed through these 2 places briefly and weren't able to stay. Of course the sunshine and the blue sky might have coloured our view.

It's becoming apparent to us that we have far too many highlights to fit into one post, so we'll break here and bring you part two soon.

Lots of love, the Camino bears xxx

Gio's Camino Crosses

Gio here, with the first of some reflections on our wonderful walk. From the moment I first heard about the Camino, I was really taken with the historic nature of the route, and thought it would be really amazing to walk the same route that has been walked by thousands of pilgrims for over a thousand years.

All along the way are many reminders that the route is walked by pilgrims with religious motives. I particularly liked all the crosses that appeared, quite frequently, along the way, and I'd like to share some of my favourites with you.

Some you simply could not miss, as they were large and prominently placed on the path.


This was one of my favourites, as its very simplicity made it all the more powerful as a symbol and I liked the fact that you couldn't ignore it as you passed by.

Other crosses were tucked away to the side of the path. Many of these were iron crosses, but I much preferred the wooden ones such as this one ...


... especially when they led the eye to a lovely pastoral scene, as this one did. The only thing I found a bit disturbing was the piles of stones that were put on, or around, the cross. I kept thinking, this is a cross not a cairn, but I read somewhere recently, that pilgrims leave stones to remember loved ones who have died. If this is the reason for the stones being left, then I think I can just about accept it.

Some of the crosses are very old. My next one, which we encountered when walking between Figeac and Cajarc, was reported in our guide book to be the oldest cross in the region, but sadly it gave no estimate of how old.


As we sat beside this cross, looking at the weathered stone, we had a real feeling that it had stood there for centuries. I really like this cross.

My last cross is a rather more modern one, and certainly not lacking in green credentials.


It is an ingenious piece of topiary and I think it makes a great statement.

I hope you have enjoyed sharing my photographic cross collection.

Lots of love Gio xxx

P.S. sorry our blog layout has gone haywire. When we've worked out why, we'll try and fix it.

The Best Laid Plans

It's been quite a while since we last posted and it's hard to believe how much has happened in just a few days. Of course, if you've been following our minders' blog you will know all there is to know.

Our walk out of Boadilla was a rather wet one. It was the first time since we started walking in September that we had set off in the rain. Fortunately the rain had raised temperatures so we didn't get cold, and our spirits were raised as we walked along an old canal, since as regular readers will know, we are big canal fans. It was sad to see a fine lock staircase no longer in use, and with lock gates at the top end only. It was quite a spectacle, but we were prised away by the promise of a nice, hot cup of coffee.

The rain continued all day, but fortunately our lunch problems were solved by a nice lady at a hostal we passed, who cooked us plates of pasta with cheese and tomato soup! Being rather wet on the outside, provided us with a good excuse to book into another private room at a hostal, at the town of Carrion de los Condes.

In the end this turned out to be a wise decision for more than the original reason of spreading out wet gear. Our male minder, who had been having some foot troubles for a while, thought we should see if a day off helped. Thanks to our hostal room, we had somewhere warm and dry, with a TV with a good sports channel, to hole up the next day, while we anxiously hoped for foot improvements. The extra day gave old friends a chance to catch up with us, and this is exactly what happened. We were very pleased to see our Belgian friend, Luc, walk in to the restaurant where we were having our pilgrims' meal, and spent a happy hour catching up on each other's news.

Unfortunately, the day off, didn't improve the bad foot, and during one of the most miserable walks of our life the next morning, (17km of the straightest, red earth Roman road, with nothing of interest on either side to view, and an icy gale blowing right into our faces) we came to the conclusion, reluctantly, that finishing the camino on this trip simply wasn't going to be wise, or possible.

At the albergue, at the grandly named village of Terradillos de los Templarios, which wasn't so grand in reality, as there wasn't so much as a bar or a shop, our minders monopolised the PC offering the internet, so we couldn't get near it to write a post. They did have important business to do though, as they were researching ways to get home and successfully booking a flight.

They did well, and the next day we had an amazing travelling day. First we all walked the 12 km from Terradillos to the next town of Sahagun. From there we caught a train to Leon, and from Leon, caught a bus for the three and a half hour ride to Santander. By this point it was gone 7.00 p.m. so we checked into a lovely 3 star hotel for a bit of pampering. You should have seen the toiletry range - it could have kept us occupied for the whole weekend!

In Santander we occupied our time before our flight back to England using the 'tusbic' scheme. This allows you to register and leave a deposit on your credit card, at which point you can release a bicycle and cycle round the city for no fee at all. You can return your bici to any of the stations round the city. We kept well clear of the traffic and mixed it with all the promenaders who were walking along the water front and the lovely sandy beaches. It was such a great scheme and should definitely be introduced in England.

So now we are back in England, rather sooner than we expected. Rest assured we will be putting the extra time to good use and hopefully embarking on another adventure soon, so watch this space. In the meantime, we will be planning to share some of our camino photos with you and hopefully will get to visit some of our many friends.

Lots of love the Camino Bears xxx

Making Good Use of All that Wind!

So here we are again, to continue from where we last left you in Burgos.

As we object to paying to enter churches, just as much as we object to them being locked all the time, we decided to wait to visit the cathedral until the pilgrims´mass at 7.30 p.m. We were quite willing to attend the mass, but would also use the opportunity to have a free look round.

We had not bargained for the spectacle that was in store for us. See our minders´blog for full details, but we ended up as three small bears in a very big ceremony, with lots of robed clergy, multiple archbishops, even a cardinal, and lots of incense swinging (or whatever you call it). We were disappointed that our Spanish was inadequate to tell us what was happening, but a switched on minder worked out that it was probably the inauguration of a new local saint, called Raphael.

The next day we had to leave at 8.00 a.m. so out we went into the cold and dark, and promptly got lost trying to find the way out of Burgos. As it was Sunday morning there weren´t too many locals to ask ´donde esta el camino?´ but fortunately a kind local spotted us, before we saw him, and put us on the right route.

Not long after Burgos we started to climb into the much talked about high meseta. It is supposed to be a very bleak and isolated crop growing area, and very monotonous, but we loved the peace and quiet, big skies and landscapes and the birds, including some scary vultures. We are also very impressed by all the wind turbines which adorn every hill top in numbers too great to count (next time we can´t sleep we will picture the wind farms and try counting the turbines). Many of them seem pleased to see us and wave their arms madly at us, so of course we wave back.

Today we are staying at at small town called Boadilla. There is a swimming pool but it was too cold to use it, even though we have lsot the chilling east wind. When we looked in at the albergue bed concentration, it was a bit depressing, so we took what the owner said was a good choice: a room in the main house. As we opted for non ensuite, it is a real bargain, and although more expensive that an albergue bed, it is still no more than the cost of a bed in a youth hostel at home, so a real bargain, especially as we get sheets and towels provided. It is so much more relaxing to have our own space to relax in. The only touble is, that just like in Travels With My Donkey, when Tim Moore discovered that a brandy was so affordable, he realised he would want one every night, the same is likely to be true with us and hostal rooms. On the plus side, we can still have a cheap pilgrim meal, and as tonight, get to take this together with all the other pilgrims - tonight again with our Slovak friend whose name is a bit complicated. We just don´t return to their dormitory with them afterwards.

We are sure we will sleep well tonight.

Lots of love, the Camino bears xxx

Our First Marathon

We hope all our readers have been avidly following our minders´blog as that will give you all our news, as, strangely enough, we do all walk together and share the same experiences.

Tonight´s quick post is coming from a very new pilgrims´ hostel, right in the centre of Burgos. It was only opened last year so is very modern, and has nicely partitioned bed areas on 7 floors. As we were early arrivals, we have beds on the first floor.

It is only a stone´s throw from the hostel to the very fine cathedral and there are lots of expensive hotels nearby, so we feel very fortunate to have accommodation for a minimum donation of €3 - we did actually put in a bit more.

The walk into Burgos was an interesting one. We started off climbing a stony sheep path up a hill, then we came down, crossed some agricultural land, then walked right round the airport perimeter fence, before walking the last 8km into the city centre through parkland beside the river. As it is Saturday, the Spaniards were out in force, walking, running or cycling, and they do seem to be taking more exercise than the average Brit.

We were pleased to arrive at lunchtime as our paws are still recovering from our marathon walk of two days ago when we unintentionally did a marathon length leg of over 40km. We had already set ourselves a challenging target, without allowing for the fact that our chosen hostel was shut. There was no other choice but to walk on for another hour to the next town. Fortunately when we got there we did find ourselves an excellent room, with a complimentary carafe of red wine which soon revived us, as did the massaging shower.

The big change over the last week has been the change in the weather. Still no rain, and clear blue skies and lots of sunshine, but there is a biting wind from the east (Siberia?) and first thing in the morning and in the evening, it gets very cold. Our wardrobe has now completely changed and all of the winter clothes we have been carrying around unused for weeks, are now becoming essential wear. As we set out yesterday morning we were surprised to see frost on the grass, and it was the same today. Possibly our Helvellyn high altitude has something to do with it. Needless to say we are now drinking more cafes con leche than San Miguel!

20 minutes on the internet machine doesn´t last long so we must now say hasta luego!

Lots of love, the Camino Bears xxx

Red Wine Heaven

So it does seem that life without an iPod is perfectly possible (it helps to have an MP3 player on your phone though!): this trip is supposed to be about living simply anyway, so we need to start putting theory into practice. Today we are reporting from a back room of a small shop in the even smaller town of Navarette. It is the first place we have stayed in the region of Rioja - we crossed the boundary today - and we are looking forward to a glass of the local vino later.

Talking about wine, we need to bring you up to date with news since our stop on Saturday at Puenta la Reina, and most of it concerns wine. With our meal in the hostel we were served wine in a pint glass, and what´s more, the glass was three quarters full! We certainly had a good night´s sleep after finishing it while watching basketball on the T.V.

Then the next day we managed to time our arrival at the famous Irache wine fountain for mid afternoon. As there is free red wine on tap, it was a much better time to pass than just after breakfast. We had to wait a bit for our wine tasting as, upon entering into the enclosure with the fountain, one of our minders managed to lose a trekking pole through some iron railing into the winery works area below. Being a Sunday, this was completely closed off. We all had to initiate an elaborate fishing exercise to retrieve the pole, by hooking another pole into the loop of the handle and raising it very slowly. By the time the rescue operation was complete, both we, and a small audience which was watching with bated breath, agreed that we had earned a sample of the wine.

The critical tap is the one on the left: the one on the right is for water! We did not expect wine being given away for free to taste as good as it did. Even Gio, who is usually quite abstemious, got stuck in and slurped his fill.


If you go to http://www.irache.com/ you can see the webcam which is focussed on the fountain and you might see some other pilgrims, or locals, indulging.

From the fountain, we continued for another couple of hours to a small albergue run by a Dutch evangelical organisation. A team of 5 lovely Dutch people looked after us, and about 14 other pilgrims, extremely well and cooked us a lovely paella. We have never heard such good English being spoken as was spoken by those Dutch friends. The place seemed to attract English speakers, and among our fellow guests were 4 Americans and an Australian. We also re-encountered Johannes, the German-Swiss chap who we last saw well over a month ago, when we shared a mobile home with him, only about a week into our trip. It is a very small world on the Camino.

Last night, after a week or sharing dormitories we treated ourselves to a $40 private room with ensuite facilities. It was nice to be able to let our fur down without disturbing anyone, and after 2 long days of 30km we thought we´d earned it. We also had reason to celebrate as our GPS clocked up our 1000th kilometre as we walked into the town (Viana). We have actually walked further, as there have been times when the GPS accidentally got shut down, and when batteries have run out.

Late this morning we passed through the big city of Logroño which was nearly as big as Pamplona. We did a couple of hours of sight-seeing and shopping, mainly food and pharmacy, and also purchased a trendy belt for one of our minders who can no longer keep her walking trousers up without one! The camino was routed extremely well and kept us out of the traffic except for the very centre and we went though some lovely parkland areas.

We think that´s most of the news for now,

Lots of love, the Camino Bears xxx