Christmas Seems a Long Time Ago Now!

Hello again everybody. We hope your Christmas was as good as ours. We're sorry we've been off air for so long, but this is the result of us being so busy having a good time, and getting to visit lots of lovely people and places, that our paws have hardly touched the ground.

We spent Christmas Day (from 3.00 p.m. when we arrived) at the Midlands branch HQ. The Suffolk branch had already arrived so we got into a festive mood very quickly.


We had fun turning cracker pulling into a tug of war contest. Here you see umpire Chelmer, adjudicating the pull between Black Doggy and Dessie.

All the fun was aided by the odd glass or two of festive tipple. You may need to enlarge our photo to see it, but if you do and you look closely, you will see we were drinking rather special wine from Fortnum and Mason's no less. Needless to say we didn't buy it, it was a thank you gift from an appreciative Bears Unlimited client.

We had a simply splendid Christmas meal and only just left room for home made Christmas pudding. We all gathered round for the ceremonial lighting of the brandy poured on the pudding.


Unfortunately it didn't photograph too well, but we all know that we were just a hairs length away from some lovely blue flames.

Our day was full of lovely company, fantastic food and wonderful presents. We couldn't have asked for more. We did make sure though,that amongst all the fun, we didn't forget what Christmas is really about - Bris even went to three Christmas Day church services (4 including the Midnight Communion). The rest of us were happy with one!

More news soon.

Lots of love, all at Bears Unlimited xxx

I See Some Ships!

We were in luck, the sun continued to shine into the afternoon. And so, after a trip to Majestic's Wine World, to pick up more than a few bottles of 'Domaine de Richard', our favourite quaffing wine, I took the guys over to the 2 Caps area of the Opal coast. The Caps Blanc Nez and Gris Nez are some of my favourite local beauty spots and I was eager to show them to my new English friends.


We went first to the Cap Blanc Nez and here, when we looked over the cliff edge, we got to see all those ferries that we didn't see when we were on the beach at Calais. There are some very tall chalk cliffs at the Cap Blanc Nez and we set out to explore them on foot. As we walked down from the tallest point towards a huge expanse of sandy beach, we got into a good natured argument about whether French beaches, such as this one, were superior to Norfolk beaches. I was arguing in favour of French beaches, while George & Yorkie were trying to convince me that Holkham Beach, in Norfolk, would always win hands down.


Our argument got so heated that we ended up failing to concentrate on our balance and fell off our viewpoint from which we were taking in the vista. Chelmer managed to capture the moment of our topple rather well.

Perhaps we should leave it to you our readers to settle the argument. As sandy beaches are common to both locations, it probably boils down to whether sand dunes and pine woods win over chalky cliffs. Anyone care to cast a vote?

Lots of love, Gilbert & the French travellers xxx