Well Sited Toilet Tents

Oh dear, shame on us, no post for over a month, that's really bad ... but we have been off travelling again! News in a while.

Back in India ... there was no further rain overnight and thanks to our early night it was no hardship to get up at 5.00 a.m. for the wonderful mountain views.

Gio was rather taken with the sight of the first rays of the sun lighting up Kanchenjunga. You can see why the range is described as the sleeping Buddha, although sorry, we slightly chopped off the top of his head to the extreme left, an easy mistake given that we were still half asleep (well Yorkie and I were - Gio as usual was as bright as a button).

The walking that day was rather special. As we had left the jeep track behind, it was all off road walking, either across lovely green pastures - such as this one, where our rule train overtook us -

or dirt tracks which were easy to walk on.

As it was a shortish walking day, it wasn't worth having lunch on the way, but as it was going to be a late lunch by the time we'd reached camp, we had a soup stop en route. It was lovely hot soup with a choice of flavours and lovely japattis to go with it. We didn't really need our lunch proper after that!

We had free time at the camp after lunch so we went for a bit of an explore which was good to do as we were at a place where several paths converged and we could only leave on one the next day. The afternoon started off fine and sunny with blue skies, as you can see from our next picture ... Gio was pleased to find another collection of prayer flags on poles ...

... but the sunshine didn't last and quite early in the afternoon it got very cold and windy and a lot of mist rolled in. For the second day running we snuggled up in our tents to keep warm. The visibility got so bad that you almost needed a compass to find your tent again after venturing out for a visit to the dining tent or the toilet tents, and it was quite funny when one lady went into the wrong tent and gave it's occupant a bit of a fright.

The next morning the wind had gone and the mist had cleared. The sun was out again and the sky was blue. What's more, there was a treat in store going to the toilet tents - they were toilet tents with a great mountain view.

Lots of love Gio, George and Yorkie xxx

Out with the Old ...

The New Year is now well underway and, on Sunday, we admired our new Christmas tree for the last time until next Christmas. Before the rather sad tree undressing ceremony, we turned off the lounge lights so our tree's lights could shine without competition. 

 

Gerry, Louis and I (Gio) were lurking in the branches, ready to take off the decorations. Can you see us, looking rather like decorations ourselves? 

Just as we've ended one year and started another, so the time has come to finish our Mont Blanc posts and start some new adventures. 

You may recall that by the end of our last Mont Blanc post, the walking was complete, but there was still a free day to enjoy the delights of Chamonix. We had a very relaxed day looking round and liked what we saw. 

We visited the church and admired the stained glass windows depicting the outdoor activities for which the town is famous ... 

... we visited lots of outdoor shops - our favourite type of shop - and picked up some great bargains in the Quecha shop (we should definitely have more Quecha shops over here). We then found a pleasant restaurant for a spot of lunch. Yorkie very definitely approved of the duck crepe. 

 

We spent the afternoon watching an international climbing competition in the main square. 

Men climbed the face on the left and women the slightly different face on the right. The big screens you see to the right of our picture, gave us close up views of the techniques of both climbers. As soon as a climber fell off they were replaced by another competitor. It was non stop action and completely fascinating. We spent several hours watching and only left to in search of an ice cream before returning to our campsite via a pleasant riverside walk. 

In the evening we had our final group meal and, realised it was probably time to go home, when, after several dry days, it started raining again. 

We left for Geneva airport and home the next day. We had enjoyed a marvellous adventure and thoroughly recommend the Tour de Mont Blanc to anyway who is up for a great walking challenge. 

Back soon, lots of love

George, Yorkie and Gio xxx

Payback Time

Yorkie and I might have missed one local training session, but we more than made up for it on a 3 day camping and endurance walking mini break in the Peak District (we're not sure that 'break' was quite the right word for it, although we did play as hard as we worked).


Here we are at Edale Cross enjoying a break in the sunshine after a strenuous climb up from Hayfield. What we didn't realise at the time, was that we were about to descend the same distance had already climbed into Edale, only to climb up the same distance again to return to the Cross, in order to descend again to our tent!

It certainly helped to get us into shape though and now we are simply raring to go and counting down the days.

We'll be back very soon to bring you right up to date on the final week's preparations.

Lots of love George & Yorkie xxx

En Vacances

Our first picture, showing moi (Gilbert) - look closely at the basket - with some of my compatriots, should leave you in no doubt where we went for our latest adventure.

My emigration from France to Norfolk last year, to join Bears Unlimited, meant that an annual jaunt to 'la belle France' is an absolute necessity to stop me becoming too homesick. My fellow members of the Norfolk branch didn't need too much persuading to join me on our latest adventure. They said that most years they would pop across the Channel for a couple of days, to replenish the wine cellar, and agreed that an extended visit would provide a great opportunity to travel a little further afield and see more of France than the shops.


As last year, we travelled across via Eurotunnel. Thanks to me being so eager to set paw in France, we arrived at the Terminal really early and caught a much earlier train than the one we'd booked.

On arriving at Coquelles we had a drive of about 70 miles to reach our camp site just outside the lovely Somme Bay town of St Valery. This time there was no camp to set up as we had booked a Eurocamp pre-erected tent and, even more luxury, there was no meal to cook as we were able to pop across to the chalet that members of the Midlands branch had been renting for the past week, and enjoy a meal and a glass of wine with them.

First though, there was a very important task to be completed: the raising of the bear flag outside our camp area.


See what we got up to in France next time.

Lots of love Gilbert xxx

Final Reflections

We've blogged a good few words about this year's Greenbelt and we're sure you've read enough to know what you missed if you weren't there with us.

We'd like to finish with 2 of our favourite photos, which we think sum up, more than words, the spirit of this year's festival.


The first is of me (Gio) with a rather lovely sunflower. As this year's theme was 'Rising Sun' this picture had special significance for me and it will remind me of all my happy memories of my first ever Greenbelt, every time I look at it.

My second picture shows our tent lit up at night with Bris looking out for me as I came back from a final visit to one of the indispensible Andy Loos ...


With so many tents in the camping ground, having a lighted window and a friendly face looking out, was so welcome and stopped me getting lost.

This picture also reminds me, that there is so much going on at Greenbelt, that late night returns to your tent are very much the norm. Once back at our tent we would would sit up for another hour or so, relaxing over a glass of wine and talking over the events of the day with friends Travelling Moose and T5 Wilbur. We didn't get a lot of sleep but we got enough to fully enjoy the next day.

I can't wait for next year and Greenbelt 2009.

Lots of love Gio, Bris and the Greenbelt crew xxx

We Didn't Get Speared!!

Our first evening went in a bit of a whirlwind, we started of listening to Brian McLaren talking about the Church unfortunately there was a problem with the electricity and so Brian had to talk using a megaphone.


After that we watched a great mime act and then went into a Yurt for some world music and then to main stage where Bris and I (Gio), danced enthusiastically to Michael Franti and Spearhead (but we didn't get speared - except by the music).




Love Gio, Bris and the Greenbelt Crew xxxx

Wot No Microwave?!

We hope you enjoyed playing spot the difference. Those of you who did, may have spotted the difference in the colour of the sky between the 2 photos.

It would certainly be true to say that we had a mixed bag of weather during this recent holiday. The week started off lovely and sunny, then it got very windy and then, in the middle of the week, the showers started.

The rather dark sky in this year's Tarn Hows picture was a sign that it was about to rain ... very heavily. Before we had completed our circuit of the Tarn, the heavens opened and we got very wet.


Back at camp Randolph (the hot water bottle reindeer) and Beddy Bear Benji knew they could provide just what was needed to dry us out and warm us up. The kettle was filled ready to be boiled to fill Randolph's bottle, but where was the microwave needed for Benji's sun bathing session, to warm him up so he could in turn warm others?

As you can see the guys had a good hunt round the camp kitchen, but on finding no microwave, declared themselves spectacularly unimpressed with its facilities, hence the glum faces.

Never mind Benji it's the thought that counts, and it was supposed to be a holiday for you anyway.

Lots of love the Bears Unlimited campers xxx

Anyone for Hockey?

The work of setting up camp hadn't ended with the raising of the Bear flag: this just signified that our tent was up, and therefore, like the Queen with the Royal Standard, we were in residence.

Woolly always gets very excited when he returns to his birthplace and can't keep his hooves still for one minute. He therefore proves to be very useful round camp and anticipates all the jobs which need doing.


Here he is with Patrick filling up the water containers. As you know, we like to do our bit to promote our favourite brewery, Woodforde's (not that they've rewarded us for all the free publicity with a complimentary barrel yet!) but we can assure you it was only water coming out the tap, not beer.

As this is a wonderful, away from it all, campsite we have to provide our own toilet facilities.


Putting up the toilet tent is therefore a very important job, and once it's up and our portable toilet installed we can relax and uncross our legs.

We save our favourite job til last. This is to clear our camp area from from sheep droppings so we don't sit in them or take them into the tent. We get a couple of games going which make this task a really fun one.


In case our ingenuity is greater than your imagination, we'll tell you that we played sheep pooh hockey and sheep pooh snooker using our trekking poles as sticks and cues. As the sheep stay in our camp field, providing good company for Woolly, it is usually necessary to have a return match later in the week.

Hopefully you can tell by now that we just love camping - when it's not raining anyway!

Lots of love from the Bears Unlimited Camp Crew xxx

Adventuring Swallows & Amazons Style

Well, would you believe it, we're having so many adventures this year that another adventure starts before we've finished telling you about the previous one. We simply can't keep up with our posts, so you'll have to excuse us if we do a bit of backwards time travel in our blog.

We're only going back to last month though, when we had a simply superb camping adventure in the Lake District. We set up our camp in what is probably our favouritist place in this country, Hoathwaite farm at Torver, near Coniston.


We love it so much as we are able to camp very close to the shore of Lake Coniston and have great lake views from our encampment. It is simple camping with few facilities, but that suits us fine as camping is, for us, all about the great outdoors and getting close to nature. We took our Mirror sailing dinghy, 'Miri' with us, and our walking boots and planned a week of wonderful outdoor adventures following in the footsteps of our Swallows & Amazons heroes.

Before we could start our adventuring though we had to observe the ceremony of the raising of the bear flag.


Here we are standing respectfully to attention while the flag was raised. You can see the raised flag flying in our earlier picture.

Don't you just wish you were there too - we certainly wish we were still there.

Lots of love, the B.U. Swallows & Amazons adventurers xxx

When 2 Blogs Meet (it could only happen at Greenbelt!)

We haven't quite finished our Poland adventures, but we've had such great excitement this weekend we simply can't wait to tell you about it.

We've had a fantastic long weekend at Greenbelt, a mega arts festival held at Cheltenham racecourse. We arrived on Friday morning and have only just got back, which just goes to show how much there is to see and do there! We camped under the bear flag which flew proudly for the whole weekend.


Greenbelt is always a special place and one of the highlights of our year, but this year it was even more special than the last 2 years we've been, as we met someone we've been waiting a whole year to meet. Can you guess who? Yes, it was our friend Naughty Bear whose blog we discovered at Greenbelt last year and which was the inspiration for our own blog.

Our regular readers with good memories will recall that we'd seen Bear last year having his picture taken but we'd been too shy to say hello. After reading his blog all year and exchanging emails and comments, he's become a real virtual friend, so when we found out he was coming to Greenbelt 2007 we hoped we'd get a chance to meet.

There are thousands and thousands of people at Greenbelt and we bears are too short to see very far ahead, so keeping an eye out for Bear seemed a bit like looking for a needle in a haystack. However, some things are just meant to be, don't you think, and on Saturday evening we literally passed each other.

We were far from shy this year and rushed up to say hello and introduce ourselves.


And here we all are chatting happily and exchanging bear hugs. It was simply great to meet bear and his nutella gatherer and we had loads to talk about. Having virtual friends is great but meeting them in the fur is even better!

Bear has been doing some great postings about Greenbelt and has lots of photos which capture the spirit of this great festival so well, so have a read of his blog which you can easily reach by using the link to Where's Bear in our friends blog spots section.

We'll report on the rest of the weekend soon.

Lots of love George, Yorkie, Chelmer, Rocco and Bris xxx