Be Prepared!

Chief mechanic and engineer Blue Bear here - you don't often hear from me as I do tend to be rather busy, especially at this time of year. When icy and snowy weather arrives, while Chelmer is busy worrying about the birds and local wildlife, my focus is on keeping the fleet of bearmobiles in tip top condition and prepared for hazardous driving conditions.

One important investment the Board of B.U. authorised me to make just over a year ago, was the purchase of a set of winter tyres for one of the bearmobiles. I felt this was a good move to make as we live in rather a rural area, with little public transport, and we do need to keep mobile even when snow and ice appear.

The first year we had the winter tyres, we only had one set of wheels, so had to pay a friend to take off one set of tyres and put on the other. I'd been looking out for a new set of wheels on E-bay and managed to get a set before the time came to take off the summer tyres.

This made it nice and easy to put on the winter tyres when the time came. It was just a case of changing a wheel, but it took me a while as I had to do it four times.

I then had to find somewhere to store the summer wheels and tyres. It's a good job I'm a big strong bear as I had to lug them up to the garage roof to store them on the beams.

I had as good a workout that day, as any of my friends who pump iron at the gym.

Last week I also made sure all bearmobiles carried shovels, rescue mats (to provide tyre grip), ice scrapers hi-vis jackets, torches, boots, warm clothes, water and Mars bars.

Despite all the snow last week, we managed to keep motoring and stayed safe, so I was quietly pleased with my preparations.

Don't forget to equip your car properly too before you venture out.

Lots of love Blue Bear xxx

Disaster Strikes

There have been some long faces, and not as much laughter as usual, at the Norfolk Branch over the last couple of weeks. We are all upset at what happened to our much loved Bearmobile 2. While she was innocently and lawfully stationery in the road, waiting to make a right hand turn, someone (we will say no more about them as it wouldn't be printable) drove into BM2 at speed and did some serious damage.

BM2, being the trooper that she is, took all the impact and as a result our minder didn't suffer a single scratch. We were able to drive her home, and, as soon as I could, being the Bears Unlimited Chief Mechanic, I checked her over, to see what could be done.


Considering the force of the impact, at first inspection she didn't actually look too badly damaged. I examined her from every angle and unfortunately saw a few things that caused me some concern.


I realised that the experts needed to be called in. Our insurers sent a recovery vehicle to take her off to a big repair centre on the edge of Norwich. We were pleased that she was able to drive up the ramps under her own steam but we were very sad to see her go. We all desperately hoped we'd see her driving back into our drive before too long.


The initial prognosis did give us some hope. The engineer who inspected her, thought she could be repaired, but as she was a bit of a borderline case he said he would have to call in one of the Insurer's own engineers for a second opinion. We settled down nervously to wait for the verdict.

Lots of love from a rather subdued Blue Bear and friends xxx