Ribs Takes in the Midlands

Well how can we follow that one? Well done Suffolk Branch!

We'll follow it with something calm and relaxing; a report of a caravanning holiday. As we're just back from a very successful trip, we'll start with our most recent trip first and work backwards.

Our latest adventure started with our annual trip to the Greenbelt Arts Festival - not at Cheltenham race course this year, but at a new venue of Boughton House, just outside Kettering. We enjoyed the varied programme, although missed a decent headline act on MainStage, and we were surrounded by beautiful grounds and countryside. When it rained all day and night on Monday, we did discover the downside of the new venue; a lack of indoor facilities and permanent infrastructure.

When we left Kettering, we headed for Stratford on Avon to indulge our passion for horse racing. We'd discovered that there was jump racing at Worcester on the Wednesday and jump racing at Stratford on the Thursday. This was just perfect for us. We decided to base ourselves for a couple of days at Stratford, as rather conveniently there is a caravan site at the race course.

We got a great pitch right beside the course and we were right beside the first jump and hurdle which gave us some great spectator sport when the groundsmen came to get the jumps ready for racing. As you can see the sun was shining and the site was nice and quiet, so we were happy as Larry.

We hadn't been there long when a man came and roped us in, although we were left a car sized exit hole. This was because the disabled car park was being marked out and we were located right in the middle of it.

As Stratford is famous for it's waterways, we spent some of our time between race meetings, walking both the River Avon and the Stratford Canal. We'd been on both previously in a canal boat and recommend both as they are very attractive stretches of water.

When it came to Stratford race day itself, we had to move the Bearmobile and Ribs to the centre of the racecourse, so the disabled car park could be used.

We were the only caravan that moved, so we had the centre of the course to ourselves ....

... that was until a helicopter flew in and landed just the other side of the fence to us. We don't often get such a close up look at these amazing machines, so it was quite fascinating, if rather noisy.

We're used to Ribs turning quite a few heads and getting some admiring looks, as she's quite a characterful caravan, but this was a first ...

... as the horses went round the parade ring, they quickly spotted her with her roof sticking up like a periscope and there were quite few ears pricked up in interest. You can hardly blame them.

We think Ribs enjoyed her day at the races as much as us.

Lots of love, George, Yorkie, Patrick, Curly, Gio, Bris and Olaf xxxxxxx

Suffolk Branch ALS / Motor Neurone Disease Charity Ice Bucket Challenge

Suffolk Branch took advantage of a sunny day and now throw down the gauntlet to Norfolk and Midlands Branch members to get chilly for charity!  Admittedly we plastic members have a quick dry advantage so furries, you can wear your waterproofs!  Have fun!

https://www.justgiving.com/mndassoc/

Edit: for some reason the video doesn't show up on an iPad / iPhone, so click this link to view on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvKwa6LYrwg&feature=youtu.be

Nautical News

We'll be back with more caravanning news soon, but first a boating update.

Do you remember Miri, our Mirror dinghy moving on to her new home recently? Well we've had another departure since then; our Canadian canoe has also found a new home.

I gave her a good clean and a lot of t.l.c before she left. The nice thing is that we remain in touch with her new owners so I hear lots about her exciting new life, and all the fun she is having - it's very heartening.

You could be forgiven for thinking that, with 2 boat departures, we'd gone off boating. Far from it; it's our free time that we're short of, not enthusiasm for boats. We're also planning on being a bit more selective and lightweight. We've already bought an inflatable double kayak to take with us on holidays and we're hoping to buy a 'sit on' canoe soon.

Of course we also have our Wayfarer dinghy, Skylark, to keep us busy. We'd planned to take her out on Friday morning but when we got to Morston quay we found ...

... water absolutely everywhere - talk about a very high tide. In our picture you see what wold normally be car park covered with water and the usual jetties (by the posts) for getting to boats, especially seal trip boats, unreachable unless you were prepared to roll up your trousers and wade.

The big high tide wouldn't have stopped us going out, and it would have allowed a longer outing than usual. However the really strong wind, pushing the tide in, was the problem. To get out into Blakeney pit would have had to fight wind and tide.

I was game for an adventurous sail, but my crew were nervous and my golden rule is to put my crew first. We watched some other people trying to sail and it was good spectator sport. Each boat we watched hot into difficulties and had to give up and return before getting very far. We knew then that staying ashore had been the right decision.

We decided to take a walk along the coast path to Blakeney to see how it was faring with the high tide. As you can see, the usually fairly narrow creek was rather wide and more of a lake. The footpath along the quay was under water as was half of the road in front of the Blakeney Hotel. The poor old fun fair was suffering the worst though. It had located on the car park and the whole of the car park was covered in water. You can see the dodgems, not quite floating, but definitely not going anywhere.

Paws crossed for some calmer weather soon.

Lots of love, Eddie and all at Bears Unlimited xxx

The Freedom of the Road

Did you know that bears like to sing? If you pass below the window of our bear cave nowadays, the song you're most likely to hear us singing has a chorus that goes ...

Caravans, oh my soul is on the run
Overland, I am flying
Caravans moving out into the sun
Oh I don't know where I'm going
But I'm going.

We realise that this song probably dates just a little; it came out in 1980 and is Barabara Dicksons's Caravan song. But why are we singing it? It's because we're now caravanning bears and very happy to be so (sorry Jeremy Clarkson but we don't care what you think).

Our new found affection for caravans dates from the end of last year when a much loved family friend came to live with us. This was Ribby (Ribs for short) and Ribs is a fine specimen of a rather special and unique make of caravan, the Eriba.

Talk about Gallic charm, who could not fall for such fine looks and what an icon of the caravan world she is.

Ribs had been living with our female minder's minders for the last 18 years and given them many fantastic holidays. Our female minder recalls several happy holidays spent in Ribby during her student days before meeting our Dad.

Ribs came to live with us after Uncle G had a big birthday an decided he was a bit too old now for towing. He was sorry to see her leave, but is pleased she is staying in the family and he and Aunty G will still be able to use her, especially on holidays in Norfolk.

Their (partial) loss is very much our gain and having already had 2 great holidays, we are planning lots more. Although she is small, Ribs has a smart awning which almost doubles her size as you can see from our next picture.

This is great news for a household of bears the size of the Norfolk Branch, as it means we don't have to taken it in turns as much to go on holiday; lots of us can go at the same time, which simply isn't possible on suitcase holidays. 

We'll start telling you where we've been next time.

Lots of love, all at the Norfolk Branch xxx 

Remembering: 100 Years On

In common with many people across the country, we have remembered the outbreak of the First World War, 100 years ago today.

We gathered at our village church for Choral Evensong which concluded with an Act of Remembrance.

The names of all 72 men commemorated on the war memorials of the 4 villages of our Parish were read out, then members of the congregation lit 72 candles, one for each man, and placed them in the shape of a cross in the chancel.

Here I am with the list of names which made poignant reading.

The service took place this evening and the candles should burn for around 3 hours. This means they will burn out at around 11.00 p.m. the very time that war was declared.

I was pleased to discover, however, that there will still be light; a 7 day candle will take up the role of symbolically shining in the darkness and, the amazing thing is, that the 7 day candle will be replaced every week for the next 4 years, until the anniversary of the end of the war comes round.

The 7 day candle is on my left in the next picture.

It will look amazing as darkness falls and I'm very moved by the fact that there will be constant candlelight for 4 years. 

It's important to remember: both the lives of the fallen and the fact that the light of God will never be extinguished. 

Love Gio and all at Bears Unlimited xxx

Pottering in Portugal

Greeting readers, we hope you didn't think the blog had ended as it hasn't - hopefully that's good news for you. We've simply been incredibly busy having fun, travelling (of course) and running the Bears Unlimited business, so we decided to have a bit of a sabbatical from the blog.

Keep checking the site though as we'll try and write often enough to keep you interested and make it worth your while checking for new posts.

We've clearly got a bit of catching up to do, so where do we start? Perhaps the New Year would be a good place. While Blighty was wet and windy, albeit not that cold, we jetted off to the Algarve, arriving on 2nd January (we couldn't arrive any sooner as there was a race meeting at Fakenham on New Years Day which we couldn't possibly miss!)

As you can see from our first photo, you don't have to travel far to find sunshine and blue skies in early January.

The rocky Algarve coast with its cliffs and sandy beaches was a real joy and we were out and about exploring and researching material for the Friendly Planet guide, almost as soon as we arrived. In the evenings we swam in the covered pool at our apartments, watched DVDs from the library, played pool in the Holiday Property Bond clubhouse and tried one or two of the local wines. It was heavenly and a great way to banish the January blues.  

We were out and about every day, and made good use of our Cicerone walking guide. We were particularly fascinated by the cork trees which we encountered on several walks, as we'd never seen them before.

As you can see, only a section of cork gets harvested at a time and the harvesting is a very organised process. The number on the tree indicated the year of the last harvest (in our picture 2008) and 10 years will be left between harvests, to allow the cork to grow back even better than before. We shall always look at cork in a different light now.

Towards the end of the week we went over to the west coast and here there were some simply huge seas. Sorry, we had to use humans to provide some scale, but us travelling bears, are just too small in relation to swells of this size.

We'd like to say that we were out there surfing, but it would be a lie. Perhaps if we'd had action bear Chelmer, with us, he'd have been tempted, and might have encouraged us, but we decided our duty was to keep our minders company ... honest!

Cape St Vincent was definitely worth a visit. It's the most southwesterly point in Portugal and it has a big lighthouse ...

... and it's a great place to sit and watch the sun go down. As it was getting cold outside we sat on the dashboard of our Corsa hire car. We like Corsas as we have one at home.

We hope you've enjoyed our Portuguese highlights and will join us again sson.

Lots of love, George, Yorkie, Rocco, Rosa and Douglas xxx

Meerkovo to Suffolk

Greetings Norfolk and Midlands Branch.  My name is Sergei and I'm from Meerkovo, a small village just outside Moscow.  I was head of the principal design group of the Mir(kat) Space Program but heard that one of my new Minders needed some help keeping up with Bears Unlimited computermabob demands, especially when the servermabob goes down and it's all paws to the keyboard, so I headed for pastures new in Suffolk and have been settling in after my long journey.  I felt very at home when I 1st laid eyes on all the computermabobs at home and at my Minder's work and I look forward to meeting you all soon.  Simples!