This Day 9 Years Ago ...

Today is very auspicious day in the Bears Unlimited calendar. Anyone know why? It's 9 years to the day since our first ever post on the Bears Unlimited blog.

It was all inspired by our friend Naughty Bear who we met at the Greenbelt Arts Festival.

We'd never heard of blogging until he introduced us to his and patiently explained how it all worked. We decided that if Bear could do such a great job all on his own, with so many of us in Bears Unlimited, we should be able able to come up with something half decent.

We hope we haven't disappointed, even though we having been having a bit of a break recently. Once those autumn nights starting drawing in, we'll have a bit more time on our paws, and we hope to stage a comeback.

Representatives from all 3 B.U. branches have been getting together to celebrate and to plan for our 10th year.

If there are any special requests for an item on the blog do let us know.

Lots of love, all at Bears Unlimited xxx

Post Wedding R & R

We were impressed by how hard the Suffolk Branch had worked assisting with, and reporting on, last week's Royal wedding. What a day it was, and it made us proud to think that Bears Unlimited had played such an important part.

We thought that a good way for the Suffolk Branch to have a complete and well-earned break, would be to invite them up to Norfolk for the rest of Bank Holiday weekend. This we did, And while we were at it, we decided to invite the Midlands Branch as well, as we hadn't seen either branch for far too long.

The Midlands branch were first to arrive and to welcome them we flew both the bear flag, and, a new addition to our flag locker, Warwickshire's flag featuring the famous Bear and Staff. This is the red and yellow flag flying well in our next picture.

It is a flag with special significance for a large number of our members, as a large part of both Suffolk and Norfolk branches originate from Warwickshire.

In the evening of Royal Wedding day, while the Suffolk branch were still coming off duty, several of us went along to the celebratory lighting of the new beacon in the village of Melton Constable. There was a good crowd and a good atmosphere as we watched some bales of straw blaze fiercely.

By Saturday morning the Suffolk branch had joined us and the latest Bears Unlimited gathering was complete. It was a lovely day so we all headed to the coast for a walk. We headed for Blakeney as George was keen to show off, to his brother Isaiah, the Norfolk branch's latest addition to the B.U.assets register, a sailing boat.

Isaiah was really impressed when George stopped him by a very fine, and large, traditional working boat and demanded a picture. He knew that the Norfolk branch had good sailing skills int the form of Boating Bear, Eddie, but he didn't know the Norfolk branch profits were as good as that!

George then took him to a rather more modest craft and said "I was only joking! It's actually Tarka that's ours".

We all agreed that Tarka is a very fine craft and a much more suitable size for a bear crew. 

Over the rest of the weekend, we enjoyed more fine walks and lots of chatting and eating and drinking. All the ingredients for the best of weekends were present. The highlight of a Sheringham coastal walk was seeing these amazing pebble sculptures on the beach. We loved both the lobster and the crab, and marvelled at all the hours of work that must have gone into their construction. We'd have liked to have seen them being built.

We'll have to pop back from time to time to see how they are standing up wind, tide and, probably most detrimental of  all, the general public.

What a great weekend! We'll be resuming our Spanish postings soon, in case anyones's wondering. 

Lots of love, all at Bears Unlimited xxx

Bear Cave Make-over

We came back from our visit to the Midlands branch, to put the finishing touches to our make-over of our Norfolk bear cave.

Many paws have been working very hard at the transformation.


It tends to be a rather messy operation when bears arm themselves with a paint brush. The walls tend to fare rather better than us: they come out of the process looking immaculate, while, if we're not careful, we can end up with very strangely coloured fur. It therefore becomes necessary to search through our minders' rag bag and swathe ourselves in large t-shirts. It works a treat and we frequently give old t-shirts an inadvertent new lease of life in the process - something to do with retro 70's psychadelic styles.


It's always important to have an effective supervisor to ensure everything is properly co-ordinated and that we don't end up trying to implement too many contradictory ideas. On this occasion, Ungi did a great job for us, and we could tell he'd been watching lots of Property Ladder and Grand Designs type programmes.

We bet you can't wait to see the finished result. Rest assured it's really good. We'll show it to you next time.

Lots of love from the Norfolk branch xxx