Burns Night 2008

Sorry we're too late with this post to wish you a happy Burns Night, but we hope those of you who partook had a good one.

You may remember from last year, that it is a Bears Unlimited tradition to celebrate Burns Night, as we do have some Scots members. This year, as the great day fell at the start of the weekend, and we didn't have to get up for work in the morning, we were able to make much more of the occasion and have a party.

We invited our bear friendly friends Wade & Birgit round to join us. These are the 2 who gave Chelmer & Rocko such a great holiday last year. It was lovely to see them again.

For those of us who are not Scots and cannnot recite the Address to a Haggis word perfectly, Scottie Dog, Jock, found us an order of the supper on the internet, and printed it out, so we could join in at the appropriate time.


Here you see us listening intently to Jock addressing the haggis. Kanga and Roo, being from Australia, just couldn't work out what was going on and said the printed orders of the supper weren't much use as most of it was in Scots and they needed a translation. Don't worry they did get one and there were soon smiles on their originally bemused faces.


Before we tucked in, Jock proposed a toast to Robbie Burns and to Chef Oakley who had once again done us proud with a wonderful meal.

While the non Scots of us quite like haggis, especially when topped with Oakley's wonderful mushroom sauce, his piece de resistance was the pudding course - raspberry crowdies with whisky ice cream. Simply delicious and they just go to prove that he really should be on Masterchef.

It was well after 1.00 a.m. when we finally rolled into bed, which just goes to show how much we had all enjoyed ourselves.

Lots of love Jock & all at Bears Unlimited xxx

Great Chieftain O' the Puddin' Race

We thought we'd open with a bit of culture tonight and give, as our title, a quote from the great bard himself. Yes, we're taking a quick break from our Peaks adventure reporting, to wish all our readers a happy Burns night and to share our own celebrations.

We carefully cooked our haggis and prepared for a photo shoot as we addressed it and read Robbie Burns poetry out aloud, but it managed to escape and bits splatted all over the clean washing up (literally - the lining split!) This does seem to lend support for some of the tales of haggises (haggai?) being alive, creatures with one leg shorter than the other.


Apologies therefore that our haggis looks more like dogs food than the fine haggis it was (in truth it was actually a bit greasy and it didn't come from Scotland, it came from Lindisfarne). We missed the presence of Hamish of the Suffolk branch to give us a tune on the pipes, but we played a C.D. of pipe music and the wee dram to accompany our meal went down very well.

While the cooks were preparing the meal the rest of us were checking out Burns night sites on the net and we found a great computer game that we just can't stop playing. It's called 'the Haggis Hurl' and it's great fun so checkout this link Hurl a Haggis to give it a go.

Lots of love, all at bears Unlimited xxx