Meet Horatio

In recent years, various towns and cities throughout the U.K. have been visited by groups of animals that you wouldn't normally expect to find there. We found the streets of Manchester occupied by colourful cows when we visited on one of our canal boat trips; more recently Norwich was visited by a herd of elephants and, very recently, hippos invaded the small Norfolk town of North Walsham.

The hippos arrived completely naked, and white with cold - after all North Norfolk isn't quite as warm as their native Africa. They were found wandering the streets looking rather lost. Various organisations around North Walsham took them in and gave them a temporary home. The housing association where one of our minders works took one in and here he is ...


Being friendly bears, and animal lovers, Curly and I wasted no time in popping over to say hello. As you can see, he didn't look quite right in white and was desperately in need of a coat. While it took the staff at Victory Housing Trust a while to think about what sort of a coat they should give him, they wasted no time in deciding on a name. Horatio was the obvious choice given North Norfolk's links with Nelson and his home at Victory Housing.

We'll tell you how Horatio got his coat and what happened to his friends, in the next couple of posts.

See you soon

Lots of love, Chelmer & Curly xxx

Como es la Paella?

Although the views from the top of Mount Toro weren't the best, due to the overcast weather, we did have something of interest to watch while we were there. We arrived to find a cycle race about to finish with a sprint to the top of the mountain. While Mount Toro might struggle to qualify as a mountain, it was still a steep, zig-zagging path to the top and we wouldn't have liked to be in the saddle of those cyclists.

Just watching those cyclists toiling to the top made us hungry. And so, back at the apartments we decided that we should try out the site restaurant. Since we were in Spanish territory there was really only one dish to try ...


This wonderful plate of food was half of the freshly cooked paella for two. Before it made it to our plates the cooking pan of prepared paella was brought to our table for approval. The few moments it took to transfer to plate made our mouths water in antipation.

This paella was simply delicious and it included crabs claws which we cracked open with out teeth to reach the delicious white flesh. This was a new ingredient to us and we liked it so much we've converted Chef Bear Oakley, so he has started including crabs' claws in his home made paella.

We spoke lots of Spanish to the waiting staff in the restaurant and were very pleasd with our ability to make ourselves understood. We had a thoroughly lovely evening and to cap it all we didn't have far to walk home afterwards.

We've now come to the end of our Menorcan posts and hope you've enjoyed them and feel inspired to make your own visit.

Lots of love George & Yorkie xxx

True and False Gods

We went from one high place - the trig point - to another, the summit of Mount Toro. At 358m, Mount Toro isn't particularly high, but it is Menorca's highest point. You can tell this when you're there, from all the telecoms equipment and satellite dishes which compete for space on this high ground. Our next photo shows you what we mean ...


Not only were these 21st century icons competing with themselves for space and height, they were also vying for attention with a statue of someone really famous. Can you guess who?


We'll give you a close up in a minute, but the outstretched arms might give you a clue. The statue is of Christ, and quite rightly he does occupy the highest ground, with all the masts situated at a lower level.

While he gazed out at all the emblems of the 21st century gods we decided to focus our gaze on him, recognising that he is far more important than any modern means of communication.


Hopefully you agree with us.

Lots of love George & Yorkie xxx

Our Blog Needs You!

As you know, our vist to Menorca was very early in the season which, on the plus side, meant we had the island almost to ourselves, but on the minus side, did mean that the weather hadn't settled down to a pattern of uninterrupted sunshine.

That didn't matter for us though, as we were there to walk, not to sunbathe. We were actually very lucky with the weather as we had only one day which was windy and overcast. It was still a shorts and t-shirts day for our minders, which they were pleased about; it didn't matter for us as we wear our all purpose fur whatever the weather.

That was the day we explored the headland of Fornells. A fine walk took us up high to some exposed cliffs surrounded by sea.


It was very bleak without the sun and very deserted. There were a lot of old buildings and gun emplacements telling us that this had once been a military outpost, but the soldiers were long gone. Can you see us in our photo sheltering from the wind on the shelf of an old gun site. Being so light, we had to be careful that we didn't get blown off the edge of those high cliffs. Our minders were especially worried as they thought they'd never see us again if that happened, but they don't really know how resourceful bears are.

Also at this headland was something we'd been looking for, for quite a while: a trig point. As they are getting harder to find, we've been keen to start of series on the subject of 'bears on trig points', but we were struggling to find one to start us off.

So here we are on the trig point (or Spanish equivalent of) at Fornells, having to be guarded in case there was a sudden gust of wind.


What we're hoping is that bearkind throughout the world, will take themselves and their cameras out to their local trig points, take a picture and email it to us, telling us who they are and where they are. We'll then publish it on our blog.

We do actually have a trig point near to our Norfolk home, so we'll be sharing it with you soon.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Lots of love George & Yorkie xxx

P.S. You can email us @Googlemail.com using "Blogging.Bears"

Twitcher Bears

After our glorious swim and a laze in the sun, we rejoined the walk which once again took us on the trail of the bee-eater.

You may remember us telling you, a few posts ago, that we had been walking in bee-eater breeding territory. We were really keen to see one, having read the guide book description of their beatiful blue, orange and yellow plumage.

We were quite confident we would see one when we came in range of S'Albufera, a large freshwater lagoon which is reported to be a favourite breeding ground.


When we found ourselves with a view of the lagoon, we found a pleasant spot in a grassy meadow full of wild flowers, to do some birdwatching. The view was a bit distant so we had to get our binoculars out.

Patience isn't a bear's strong point and after about 5 minutes with no sighting, we began to get restless. We dug out our sandwiches and scattered the odd crumb as we munched, in the hope that they might attract a hungry bee-eater. They didn't.

Later on in the walk we came within a stone's throw of the lagoon. It was a birdwatchers paradise, but sadly for us, bee-eaters were strangely absent that day. We wished the mosquitoes were as elusive as the bee-eaters though as they swarmed all around us.

Lots of love George & Yorkie xxx

Small is Beautiful

By now you should have a good idea how lovely many of Menorca's sandy beaches are. However, in the case of Menorca, it is definitely the case that 'small is beautiful' and the beaches that we fell in love with were the small sandy inlets that we found on a walk close to the small town of Es Grau. We'll show you what we mean:


We've said it before, but we'll say it again, don't you just wish you were there?

Our rock was great to perch on after a swim and allowed us to dry in the sun without getting our wet fur too sandy. We don't want to think that we're fussy and fastidious, but we knew we had a lot of walking ahead of us and gritty fur can cause chafing!

Talking about swimming, we're sure we'll tempt you even more when we show you where we'd been swimming just a few moments earlier ...


Our guide book used the word 'exquisite' and we couldn't agree more. And the real bonus was that we had it all to ourselves. Mind you, had there been anybody else about we would simply have moved onto the next beach as there were more than enough to go around!

Lots of love, George & Yorkie xxx

Surf Bay Watch Bears

We enjoyed our spell of lifeguarding at the pool so much, that the next day we felt inspired to move on to bigger things.

As if was early in the season, we found there was no-one available to man/bear the official beach lifeguard stations. They were fine structures as you can see.


We decided to offer our services and clambered up onto the platform to survey the beach. We looked very small against such a big and robust structure, but look hard and you'll see us. The view of the beach was a great one, and it was a beautiful sandy beach.

The only problem was that there were was no-one out swimming for us to watch and we found ourselves being mesmerised by the motion of the surf. Like a siren it summoned us, and we found the urge to leap into the surf irresistible. We didn't feel like we were derelicting our duty seeing as no-one else was swimming.

As we ran down the sand we did discover some casualties requiring rescue - we're the 2 dots in the middle of them.


These were the many jellyfish which had been washed up in an overnight storm. We were quite strategic though; we decided to leave rescue until after our swim and surf, so we wouldn't bump into them, and risk getting stung. This cunning plan worked a treat and we didn't swim into a single one.

Lots of love, George & Yorkie xxx

More Moose News

Bris has received a new post card from his friend Travelling Moose with all Moose and his family's news from over the last year, since his adventure in Greece - reported in our 300th post - and our get together at Greenbelt last year.

So we will take a break from our Menorcan adventures to share Moose's news with you.

We hope you enjoy it as much as we have.

Love Bris and all at Bears Unlimited
xxxx

Hi Bris,

I’ve been a bit busy recently, and I see you too. Here’s a quick postcard before I go off on this years holiday.

Last summer we all went to Austria, It was hot and sunny when we arrived, but the got colder every day, and eventually it snowed! but to be fair we were 3000m up visiting a very interesting hydro-electric dam. it reminded me of the land where moose are free to roam amongst the trees and snow, with just the occasional cross country skier to steer clear of. By the way, how is your cross country ski practice coming along? You can see me here feeling very at home in the trees and snow.













Remember our night out at the local Quiz Night? The star of the show was surely Grommit, well here he is pondering over one of the questions – I think we caught him wondering if smoky bacon crisps go well with the local brew!


















But whatever was in that brew worked wonders, as we cleaned up on the answers and narrowly won first prize!













It wasn’t long before I had to go away for work, but this time I made sure to keep off the hot cakes (which always seem to disappear very fast) and had healthy breakfasts all week long.













Which was just as well as I needed something to make my bones grow big and strong, on our day off we went to try out some car racing, and this time I got through the height limit (with a little help) !


















But none of this was as exciting as welcoming a new member to the family, Saabrina has a new sister, with a rather comfy bonnet. New Saab has no official name yet, but seems happy with New Saab, although she answers to 2T also.













But we didn’t stop there, with new-sab came Amma and Emma, with their rather groovy socks.

And there’s more …. you may wonder why the Elks are in a baby stroller, well they’re running it in for our next scheduled arrival later this year!

Watch this space....

Love and Wishes

Moose and the (expanding) clan.