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