Our Private Paradise

After our epic journey, we had a much shorter day. We only had to cross over to Ithaca and locate Poli Bay, where we were going to be rafting up that evening.

We didn't want to go straight there though, so first we sailed up the coast of Cephalonia to do some exploring. There were some beautiful small bays, as you can see from our next picture. What a gem of a beach ...

And the best thing about it was that it was completely deserted: we could have it all to ourselves. And so we decided to drop anchor and spend a relaxing hour swimming and sunbathing.

As we got closer to shore I kept an eye on the depth of the water, both visually and by using the depth sounder. I was looking for a depth of about about 10 metres to drop the anchor. I kept looking and Milia kept getting closer to the shore, but the depth was still too deep for anchoring. It was most bizarre. It was only when it seemed that we surely must run aground that the depth suddenly dropped off.

We dropped the anchor and it held, just in time. As we went snorkelling, we discovered there was a very sudden increase in depth very close to the shore. The seabed simply dropped away. It was a great spot for swimming with the colourful local fish. We'd already got Greek salad for lunch so we didn't need to catch any fish. It was their lucky day. 

Lots of love Eddie, George & Yorkie xxx 

More than a Marathon

We suspect that Honey might be venturing further afield than Greece, but that's where we're heading back to now.

We enjoyed our evening in Zakynthos town although it was a bit stressful keeping out of the way of ferries while we waited to be parked by our lead crew, working together with the helpful harbourmaster. There were some good shops in the town so we bought everything we needed for the cocktail competition (more on that soon) and we also bought a few small Christmas presents.

We didn't stay out late though, as we had an early start the next morning. Our lead crew wanted us away around 7.30 a.m. as we had a long day ahead of us. We had a massive 42 nautical miles to cover to take us back to Cephalonia and the port of Ag Euphimia. At a motoring speed of just over 4.5 knots and a variable sailing speed, you can see the reason for our early departure.

As I am always up early, I was more than happy to make an early start. Leaving before the Sailing Holidays boat that had come in after us the night before, turned out not to be such a bright idea, when we discovered their anchor had been laid on top of ours and we were taking it up as well as our own.

Our male minder did a great job of lifting the extra anchor up and over ours, with the aid of a boat hook. This saved the skipper, who was supervising from his inflatable, from having to take an early morning swim, so he was pleased with us.

As you can see when our anchor finally came up it, was very muddy and some of the mud had ended up on our minder. It was reassuring though to know that there had been such good holding in the harbour.

It wasn't long before we saw our lead boat, Loutraki, (which leaves harbour last) come steaming up towards us, thanks to her bigger engine. We got ready to take a photo, but then she stopped dead and floundered in the water. We thought about going back to help, but as they had Sailing Holidays no.1 engineer, Richard, on board, we didn't think there would be much we could do. Sure enough Richard soon had the problem with the engine fixed, and then Loutraki really did steam past us.  

All the lead boats have a great collection of flags which are really useful for spotting them when you're out at sea. Our lead crew were flying flags from New Zealand and England and were even flying Warwickshire's bear and staff. This went down well, as the longer standing members of both the Norfolk & Suffolk branches, originate from Warwickshire, and,of course, the Midlands branch still have their bear cave there.

The rest of the trip passed without incident and it was a lovely long day at sea. We were tired, but very happy bears.

Lots of love Eddie, George & Yorkie xxx

Going Global - Part 2

Dear readers, we, the Midlands branch, are back again, with a follow up to our recent Teddies for Tragedies posting. If you recall, our last post ended with our disappointment that the bivvy bag handover had been postponed due to bad weather. We were waiting for a call from Honey Bear with another date.

We didn't have to wait too long. About two weeks after Christmas, the eagerly awaited telephone call from Honey was received. He said that the presentation and party at Sesame was now scheduled for Friday the 14th, and that we could still go along and join him.

On the day we were so excited that we arrived rather early, but fortunately Honey was already there to make sure the bags were tastefully displayed. He signed us in and showed us around. There were not many people there at this stage, and so we had a great time playing with Honey and the lovely new bivvy/sleeping bags.


Time passes very quickly when you are enjoing yourself, and it did not seem long before other people began to arrive. They all seemed to know each other, and we began to feel shy and nervous, and sat very quietly in the background, especially when Lucy and the man representing Honey's Organisation, 'Teddies for Tragedies', arrived.

We listened carefully to the man's talk, and clapped very loudly when he thanked the bag makers for all their hard work, and presented two lovely certificates with pictures of bears, like Honey, in the background. Because the recipients were seated he got down on one knee for some of the photographs ...


... so we had to stand on our chairs in order to see what was happening. We were soon spotted and invited to come closer for a better look, and ended up sitting on Lucy and her friend Pat's knees.


When we began to recover from the shock of being at the centre of attention, we were horrified to realise that our friend Honey, who had invited us, had somehow been left out of the limelight. After all, he was the bear going to do the real work helping children in tragic circumstances, so we beckoned him forward to join us. He assured us that he was happy looking on, and we could tell he is naturally modest, but we wanted everyone to know what a remarkable bear he is, so we arranged for him to sit on Lucy's knee and have a private viewing of her certificate and a photograph with her.


By this time it was lunch time, and our tummies began to rumble, and we wondered how long people were going to carry on chatting. We need not have worried, however, because, before long, the tables at the back of the room were covered with all sorts of lovely buffet food, and we were all invited to help ourselves. It was so delicious that we bears went back more than once.

We had the most lovely day out with Honey, and will be very sad to see him go when he starts his next assignment. It is great to know, however, that thanks to Lucy and her friends, both he and his colleagues, will be properly equipped, and have the type of bag they like to take with them.

Love Pooh and Connie.

A Short Hop

The wet and miserable weather that is our lot this week, causes us to dream of our sunny holiday in Greece, so let's go right back there, and pick up our tale.

If you recall, we'd just been exploring the wreck of the Panagiotis. On the journey back to harbour and our boats, we'd stopped off to swim in one of the caves. Dimitri picked one that went a long way into the cliff, so we seemed to swimming into the cave for ever. At one point it got quite narrow and rather dark, and as there were quite a lot of us swimming, we kept bumping into each other.

The high speed boat whizzed us back to harbour, and to our lunch, in no time at all as, with it's huge engine, it simply ate up the miles. There was no free afternoon for us though, as we were due in the main harbour of Zakynthos town that night. Hardly had we returned from our morning's adventure before there were only 4 boats left in Aghios Nikolaos ...

Ours is the second boat from the left - you can tell by the hint of green from the bear flag!

You can't hurry a good lunch though, so we were in no particular hurry to leave. We strolled down to Dimitri's taverna to say goodbye. It was definitely sailor friendly as you can see from the ingenious taverna signing at the entrance.

You'll appreciate how big this sail is when you look at me (Eddie) sitting on the wall under it, to provide a sense of scale.

Our introduction to Zakynthos had been great, but we were also looking forward to seeing the bright lights of Zakynthos town that evening.

Lots of love Eddie & B.U. crew xxx

Will My Bottom Keep it Warm?

As regular readers will know, we are rather partial to a drop of Woodforde's finest Norfolk ales, and have frequently extolled their virtues on our blog.

However, as a new year has started, and many people will be resolving to moderate their alcohol intake and live healthier lives, we thought this was a good time to put the record straight and confirm that we do enjoy lots of drinks besides Wherry. We all like a good cuppa, even though I always think it tastes a lot better coming from a Woodforde's mug, and we hardly ever drink beer before the sun is over the yardarm.

Having said this .... Christmas was made rather enjoyable (we stress as a one off event) by the arrival of 2 beerboxes of Woodforde' ales: one of perennial favourite Wherry, and the other, of the rather delicious golden brew of Sundew. 

As B.U. cellarman, I was in charge of looking after the beerboxes and seeing that the beer was kept at it's best. After it arrived I left it to settle in our porch , where it would be nice and cool. Unfortunately, the cold snap round Christmas, meant the beer was getting rather cooler than I wanted. I kept a thermometer to hand and tried to keep the temperature as close to the recommended 12 degrees as I could. At one point I had to employ a sleeping bag blanket, and my furry bottom to raise the temperature.

I think I must have done a good job though as both bears and minders from all 3 branches said how much they enjoyed the beer - not surprisingly it's all gone now.

Lots of love T.B.B. and all at B.U. xxx

Something New from B.U.

We would like to start this first post of 2011 wishing all our readers a very Happy New Year.  

Over the Christmas period, we had our usual Christmas meet up with both the Midlands and Suffolk Branches, and a fun time was had by all, with much Wherry and Sundew beer being consumed, along with a feast of food, supplied by Oakley our resident chef bear.

Once the feasting and catching up had taken place, as is our custom, we held the Bears Unlimited Annual General Meeting. Polar from the Midlands Branch suggested we should make more use of our Sister Blog  Bears Unlimited Biographies.  This was set up by me (Jimmy) a couple of years ago to test new features for this blog, such as our Cluster Map.  It was also set up to give our readers more of an in depth knowledge of the members of the various branches.   While Polar had been on his extended stay with the Norfolk Branch,  (reported on in October "Forgotten???") he had taken the chance to tell us all about himself.

 

Polar had enjoyed the experience so much he thought all of us should write our biographies.  This idea was enthusiastically supported by everyone, so we decided to make a new years resolution that we would post one new biography every month. We will start this month, with another member of the Midlands Branch, so keep you eyes pealed to see just who!

We then decided that we should put into action a project that has been on the back burner for a while.  As we travel across the country we often come across Trig Points set up by the Ordnance Survey, and we like to have our photograph taken sitting on top of them.  Why not then, set up a new blog with photos of us, or indeed any other Bear or soft furry, sitting on the Trig Point with a few details of where we are.  Bris, who as our readers know has a thing about churches, suggested that we should extend the scope of the blog to Ordnance Survey bench marks, as he had seen many carved on churches. 

We all thought this was a great idea, so I, along with our other top teckie Fred from the Suffolk Branch, set about making the plan a reality by creating our new blog. 

  

Our new blog is called Bears on Trig Points and can be found at http://www.bearsontrigpoints.blogspot.com/ 

Since this second of our New Years's resolutions was made, travelling bears George and Yorkie, accompanied by Rocco, have already bagged their first pair of Trig Points in Derbyshire. They will be posting on these two trig points shortly, along with another which is virtually in the Norfolk Branch's own back yard.   We then plan to trawl through the BU photo archive to add as many bear adorned trig points photos as we can find.

We hope lots of our readers will join in with this project and persuade their minders to snap them on top of their local trig points and then send the photo into us with a note of who you are and where you are. We want to get as much of the country covered as we can, as a tribute to these fine features of the British way of life.

Please see the new blog for details of how to join in.

Love Jimmy, Fred and all at BU xxx