We Find Paradise

Actually reaching our cottage, once we were nearly there and had turned off the main road, was quite an adventure. We had to take a 2km narrow track which went steeply up, and then steeply down, and it even involved crossing a causeway, with rocky beach on either side.


Eventually we saw a lovely house ahead and wondered if it would be 'Sli Na Mara' our accommodation for the fortnight. We hoped so. As we reached it and slowed, a friendly looking couple came out and asked our minders if they were who they are. We realised then that we had hit the jackpot and this idyllic spot was to be home for the next 2 weeks.

Our hosts Peddear and Kitty helped us settle in quickly and gave us a really warm welcome. In no time at all we were sitting outside in the sun taking in the beautiful surrounds.


This was the view from the bench just outside our garden. As you can see we were just a stone's throw from the sea and had a path from the garden leading straight down to the beach. As were were on a peninsula, within a bigger peninsula, the open sea was someway away, but this coastal inlet was peaceful and beautiful. What you can't see in our picture was the huge mountains, rising just a few hundred metres from the far side of this inlet.

Our next photo, looking at our accommodation from the 'main' road (which was pretty quiet by English standards) shows how idyllic our setting was.


We couldn't have asked for a finer setting and for as charming hosts (they lived at the other end of the property). We also had lots of fine canine and feline company as Peddear and Kitty provided a home to 5 dogs, 11 cats and, while we were there, were looking after 3 border collie pups who were sooooooo..... cute.

It was so delightful that I knew it was going to be tempting to stay put and not venture too far afield. I would have to think of some great outings to compete - the challenge was on!

Lots of love Patrick and friends xxx

We're On Our Way

Hi readers, and top of the evening to you, from myself Patrick. I hope I haven't kept you waiting for too long, but us Irish, like to take our time over things, and I always feel that a post is best composed over a leisurely pint of Guinness.

I think I organised a good holiday for the chaps and Rosa, and they certainly seem to have enjoyed themselves. I'm confident that when the new chapter for the Friendly Planet Guide is published, it will say nice things about my homeland.

I think I'll start from the time of us setting paw in Ireland.


This was us watching our ferry docking at Rosslare at 6.30 a.m. - we were intrigued by the man reversing it into our birth from the outdoor control panel you can just see at the side of the boat. As it was mid June, you can see it was sunny with blue skies, even at that ungodly hour.

As we'd had a cabin, we'd managed to get a good 3 hours sleep on this short crossing from Fishguard, so we were all raring to go, even if it did take us an hour to get off, after the main doors failed to open. We had quite a long journey over to the Cork/Kerry border ahead of us, but I'd planned an interesting route with lots of stops, including the first important one, for breakfast.

Later I took the chaps to Gougane Barra which is a simply heavenly spot and one of my favourite places in Ireland. Normally it's a very peaceful spot, but on this occasion ... no sooner had we arrived, than a Porsche drivers' rally turned up.


They quickly parked by the lake in a long line and turned off their engines. We all enjoyed inspecting these fine cars until Rosa called us to lunch.


We sat right at the water's edge and, after eating, cooled our paws in the water and did a spot of sunbathing. It was the perfect antidote to long hours in the bearmobile.

Felling refreshed, we did a bit of exploring. We walked in the forest park, then went to look at the delightful church which was built at the end of the 1800s on an island near the site of a former monastery.


Round the back, we found these interesting structures which we thought must be hermit cells dating back to the time of the former monastery. There was a very peaceful atmosphere and there can be few more scenic spots to meditate.

But we didn't linger, as I knew we were only about 90 minutes drive from our final destination, and we were all very keen to see it.

Lots of love Patrick and my travelling posse xxx

Where Next?

Well what can we say, what a true gent Eddie is to round off his tales of the Broads so promptly, so we can get on with telling you all about our latest adventure and the new chapter for the Friendly Planet Guide.

While Yorkie and I were there, as you were expect, the travelling party was rather larger than is usual for an overseas adventure.


This picture from the grounds of our holiday cottage, shows that we were joined by Ungi, Patrick, Gilbert and Rosa. In fact we will be taking a bit of a back seat once we have introduced this adventure and looking to Patrick to lead for us, for reasons which will soon become obvious.

The reason so many of us could partake in this adventure was because, we travelled by bearmobile and ferry, not by plane, so there were few luggage restrictions.

Clearly we haven't travelled too far, but where have we been? Does the following picture help?


If the Guinness doesn't give it away, the bright pub colours should. Yes, we've been consorting with leprechauns and enjoying a true Irish failte.

And the reason Patrick will be taking a prominent reporting role is that he is of course Irish, which many of you will know, even if the shamrock on his right paw is being rather obscured by Yorkie.

Patrick was the best and most genial guide you could wish for, so we hope you enjoy the posts which he will be putting together for you.

Back soon,

Lots of love, George, Yorkie and the Irish travellers

A Pot Pourri to Finish

Sorry for the long silence, all due to another exciting adventure taking place. In consequence, I'm now being politely encouraged by George and Yorkie to finish my posts on our Broads sailing holiday, so they can kick off telling you what they've been up to (no, this turn of phrase doesn't mean they went to South Africa to see the World Cup).

I therefore need to condense as much as I can into this post so if it's a bit bitty, then you'll know why. The extra length will hopefully make up for the lack of recent postings.

Last time, we were talking about a special mooring. It was not only was a delightful spot to moor and rest, it also had all the things I needed to complete my daily boating chores. These included:


refilling the water tank, emptying the rubbish (I've spared you a picture of the bins) and ...


pulling on and lacing up the cover at night. Bear in mind that this adventure took place in April, when the evenings were cool enough for us to really appreciate being able to turn the cockpit area into a cosy room using the cover. It worked like this ...


As the cooker was in the cockpit, under one of the seats, having the ability to enclose the cockpit was very useful.

After eating and washing up, we could retreat into the main cabin and be even more cosy.


I'm sitting on the bunk that I slept on with the rest of the crew tucked in at the side. We always got a great night's sleep. There's nothing quite like the gentle lap of water against the hull.

Our favourite staithe, Gay's Staithe, that we've been talking about, also had another interesting feature. It was home to a solar powered boat, which the public can take a trip on.

Sadly it wasn't moored up the night we were there, so all we could do was read about it.


When we got home we looked it up on the internet, and it is quite an unconventional looking boat ...


We will definitely have to go back and take a trip.

While Gay's Staithe was a special mooring for an overnight stay, we found another lovely mooring which could either be for a lunch stop or going to church.


As we were not there at a service time, for us it was a lovely lunch stop. We did think the church looked lovely, and what a great property was next to it - sadly now a former vicarage, rather than the splendid home of the present Vicar.


There's lots more I could say, but you've probably read enough for one day. I'll therefore close with a picture of the bear flag flying and a proud sailor, Randolph, standing to attention beside it. It seems a fitting way to close this nautical adventure.


I hope you've enjoyed reading, and I'll now hand the reins over to George, Yorkie and Patrick.

Lots of love, Eddie and the crew of Leander xxx

Marvellous Mooring

As I said last time, the beautiful sight of Leander sailing, was not a familiar one to us, but we did get quite familiar with her moored profile and I would spend quite a lot of our shore time, admiring her fine lines from the river bank.


I particularly liked this mooring as there was a handy seat for me to rest on as I looked at Leander and thought how beautiful she looked. In fact, not only was Leander beautiful, the situation of this mooring was also very beautiful. We were at Gay's Staithe which is a delightful and peaceful a mooring as you can get. This is how it looked, as we left the next morning after everyone else had gone.


We were all very contented. Not only had we had a peaceful night in this idyllic spot, we'd also found a good pub a pleasant mile's stroll down the road, where we'd had a lovely time chatting with 2 fellow boaters and their 2 canine friends. They (the human half of the quartet) were kind enough to decide they couldn't eat all of their huge bowl of chips, and kindly donated most of them to us.

What lucky bears were are.

Lots of love, Eddie and crew xxx

Stop Press: How Amazing!

Dear readers, I'm interrupting my posts, which as you know relate to our April holiday, with a story from yesterday, which as you will soon see, has an incredible link to our holiday.

Yesterday was our male minder's birthday, so when he had finished working, we drove over to the Norfolk Broads to see something of the 3 Rivers Race which we had heard about while on holiday.

The 3 rivers race is a real monster of a sail. It is a 50 mile course which requires competitors, who start at Horning, to round 4 marks on the rivers Bure, Ant & Thurne, before returning to Horning. It is nearly as far as we travelled in 5 days, and they have just the Saturday, running in to Sunday, to complete the course, and yes, they do sail overnight. It all sounded frightfully exciting which is why we decided it just had to be seen.

We took our bicycles with us so we could ride round some of the course and see the boats at different points on the course.

Our first stop was St Benet's Abbey. When we were still 2 or 3 miles off we could see lots of sails on the river and when we reached the river bank by the Abbey, we could see a traditional sailing boat approaching, and from the numbered board on her side we gathered it was participating in the race. As we watched the boat making the slow progress that tacking into the wind on a river gives you, we were reminded of our holiday, as we had ourselves sailed to Horning then tacked back past the Abbey with lots of short tacks and laborious progress.


I dicussed with my minder the fact that the boat looked as if it could have come from Martham boatyard, which hired us our boat, Leander, as it was very similar. Can you imagine our surprise and delight, when the boat eventually reached us, then tacked away from us, showing us clearly, the name on her stern, that of Leander.

I jumped up and down as I was so excited. Of all the hundreds of boats sailing on the Broads that day, the very first boat we had seen was our very own Leander. What an amazing and wonderful coincidence. You may wonder why we hadn't recognised her sooner, but there were a couple of reasons for this. One we had never seen Leander sailing, as we were always on board seeing the cockpit view, not the external view, and two, the sails looked different, as she had a brown rectangle of cloth which was there to use as a fill in for racing (it fills in the 45% angle between the mast and the gaff rig. My female minder also thought the curtains in the cabin were different!

As we watched Leander sail off towards Potter Heigham, we had another treat. One of the huge Norfolk Wherry Trust wherries, Albion, came up the river from South Walsham Borad and passed in front of us. It wasn't taking part in the race, but it was still a sight worth seeing.


Our next port of call was the low bridge at Potter Heigham (remember my posts about it) which racing boats had to pass under. We had heard that many did the complex operation of lowering sails, and then the mast, in mid river and right at the last moment. Our minds simply boggled as we knew how difficult this had been for us, and it was something we simply had to see.

Here again we were lucky with our timing. We arrived at Potter Heigham bridge just as a steady flow of boats was approaching. You would have to see it yourself to understand what it was like, and just how skillful some of the boat crews were.


Talk about leaving it to the last minute! I had to put my paws to my eyes and peer through my claws, as I could hardly bear to watch, as it kept looking as if a crash was inevitable.


My heart really was in my mouth, but all the boats we saw, just like this one, got the mast down just in the nick of time and made it through.

I think they were helped by the fact that the winds were light at that point so there was little drifting. Quite a few boats did stop to lower sails and masts and I thought they were very sensible!

This wonderful specator sport, and seeing Leander, certainly made it a great day and we were pleased that our minder had enjoyed his birthday so much. We will definitely be making this an annual event.

Next time we'll return to our own adventures on Leander.

Lots of love, Eddie xxx

Binoculars at the Ready

While spotting stationary features of the Broads was fine, there is nothing quite like spotting a bit of moving wildlife, and the Norfolk Broads are a fine place to view wildlife. By being in a sailing boat, we had a distinct advantage over the cruisers, as we could hear all the rustlings in the reeds which told us there was something there to keep a look out for. We made sure to keep our eyes peeled and binoculars to paw.

Top of our top 10 of Broads birdlife was the swan. We saw lots, but the one we remember best was the poor victim we saw being caught by an ineptly driven hire boat, whose skipper was couldn't work out how to overtake a tacking sail boat. Fortunately the swan wasn't hurt, he just had his feathers ruffled.

It was amazing how every time our boat stopped and some food came out, the swans gathered en masse. We're not sure how it worked but clearly there was a very effective Broads telegraph.


It reminded me of some of my canal boating holidays when we've had similar gatherings around our narrow boat. Swans can be a bit persistent in their begging for food, but they are so majestic that I can always forgive them.

One of my favourite sightings was of 2 fine examples of a more domesticated species of fauna. You can see them captured on camera below ...


Sorry guys, only joking, but it was great seeing you come out to light the stove and prepare lunch, as lots of fresh air and sailing certainly gives a bear a big appetite.

Lots of love, Eddie and friends xxx