Seasons Greetings

We did appreciate the Suffolk branch's seasonal post and it seems like it is all happening down in Suffolk. It's a good job Polly and her team are on hand to keep order. Here in Norfolk we are having a more traditional run up to Christmas and we're all looking forward to the big day on Sunday.

We have been to several sessions of carol singing, with more still to come. We particularly enjoyed an evening of traditional carols that we went to in one of our churches last Saturday evening. Two local folk musicians played us carols from the 1800s on some very old instruments: violin, hurdy gurdy, flute and Scandinavian bagpipes. They also sang and it was stirring stuff which transported us right back to the time of Thomas Hardy and Under the Greenwood Tree. We regretted the fact that many of the old carols have gone out of circulation, as we would have preferred to sing them, rather than some of the Victorian classics that are rather hackneyed nowadays.


The church was beautifully decorated and we had a good look round in the interval, while enjoying a glass of mulled wine and, no less than game pie and mince pies.

The next morning we were back in the same church for our Sunday morning service. We love the tiny Christmas tree which is a real one, and bear sized. As Gio peered over to see what was in the crib we had the same experience as the Suffolk branch - that of discovering that the baby Jesus had already arrived - or was it a stunt double, standing in until Sunday?


We are all looking forward to our multi branch re-union over the Christmas break. I'm sure we'll have lots of fun and much to report on, but until then, we wish all our readers a happy and peaceful Christmas.

Lots of love, all at Bears Unlimited xxx

Christmas Greetings from Suffolk

Hi everyone

Christmas came early in Suffolk - as you can see from our nativity scene baby Jesus has been born already and traffic officers were on hand with their first aid kit to give him the once over, as post natal care probably wasn't great in Bethlehem all those years ago. Polly was concerned that the wise men had arrived a little prematurely so she set up a road block and was fending them off in order to let the shepherds have plenty of time to visit without crowding out baby Jesus.

However, Polly then got some Police intell about Herod's nefarious plans so she quickly took up an observation post on the roof of the stable and fired a warning taser shot to see Herod off.

Unfortunately this woke up baby Jesus so other members of Suffolk Branch gathered under the Christmas tree, and after sharing their mulled wine and mince pies with him, they lulled him back to sleep with some carols.

Happy Christmas everyone!

House Sitting Can Be Such Fun

Just for a change, it's Blue Bear and Ungi here readers. While Gio, Pedro, George and Yorkie were away with our minders, walking the Camino, we had a very important job to do. We were looking after the house which includes our Bear Cave. As I, Blue Bear, am so big, our minders think I make a very good security guard and it is certainly true that I have a very deep growl, which I can make sound quite threatening, if I want to.

As well as looking after the house, we also did a bit of car sitting for a friend. The car we looked after, and still do from time to time, is a rather special car, especially for such a car enthusiast as me. It is a Austin Healey with a 'B' plate which makes it pretty old - 48 years in fact - many times old than me, and even older than Ungi!


As you can see it is a fantastic red model - what better colour can there be for a classic sports car? And on a nice day we can fold back the roof and go for a spin with the wind ruffling our fur.

As you might expect we turn quite a few heads when we go out in this car, affectionately known to us as 'Vroom'. We'd like to think this is because we cut such fine figures behind the wheel/windscreen, but it probably has as much to do with the fantastic throaty engine roar and the classic good looks of the car.


Being able to drive and look after this magnificent car was seventh heaven for me and I can honestly say I wasn't envious of the Camino walkers. I'd much rather have been behind the wheel of Vroom, which I was.

The current wintry weather and dark evenings means Vroom stays firmly tucked up in his owner's garage. I can't wait for the spring when I'll hopefully be allowed to take him out again. Before then we'll have to find Ungi a better booster seat as the wooden Rioja case he was sitting on to give him a good view, was apparently a bit uncomfortable!

Lots of love, Blue Bear and Ungi.

And to Finish ...

How do you finish the tale of such a great adventure, that has been a major influence on my life for the past 3 years, if not longer? I've been thinking long and hard, and there's no easy way to do it.

I think I'll just share a last selection of photos that have escaped the blog so far, and offer a few random bear thoughts to go with them.

The path of the camino has some lovely sections and some not so lovely, but if it were all the same, it wouldn't be half as interesting.

I did enjoy sections like the one in my first photo ...


We'd be walking through a woodland glade, with the sun shining through, enjoying a soft dirt track under our paws and some nice easy walking. And then, we'd come across a group of pilgrims having a picnic by a small stream. We would realise we knew them as companions along the way, and pause for a few friendly words. You might find it hard to see them behind my minder, but there were pilgrim picnicers there.

In fact, among that particular group of picnicers, were a lovely Dutch couple, minders of someone who became a good camino friend of George, Yorkie and myself. This was none other than Artis de Partis, who you see with me in my next photo (we were actually outside Santiago cathedral at the time).


I feel quite ashamed now that in an earlier post, before I got to know him, I referred to Artis as a strange creature! He is of interesting appearance, but that's as far as strange goes. He is delightful and has a very interesting life as the mascot of Amsterdam's Artis zoo. He is very well travelled and, if you look at the zoo's website you will see pictures of Artis all over the world. I'm sure a picture of him in Santiago will be appearing soon.

We'd like to visit Amsterdam before too long and, when we go, we will visit the zoo and look up Artis.

But back to the camino and another lovely quirk of the route. On more than one occasion we saw these adaptations to the sign used to warn motorists to drive carefully as the road was shared with the camino path.


We felt that the addition of the hair and skirt was graffiti at it's best - adding humour and not destroying the original. Everytime we saw it, it put a smile on our faces.

We didn't have a smile on our faces though, when we were woken in the middle of the night at the Rabanal alberque, by pilgrims getting up at about 5.00 a.m. to start walking in darkness. However, as we'd been woken up we also made an early start, setting out at 7.30 a.m. - even then it was still dark. We did feel it was worth it though to be able to see our beautiful surrounds gradually revealed by a lovely sunrise.


We concluded that perhaps every pilgrim should see at least one sunrise, and lots of sunsets (more of the latter as these don't require the early starts!)

Finally, for me, it was having such wonderful walking campanions as George, Yorkie and Pedro, that made our walk special. They may be veteran travellers, far better travelled than me, but they are definitely not travel weary and always take a great delight in each new day on the road.

Yorkie will always be Yorkie though, and here he is being thoroughly typical: trust him to find the biggest bottles of wine and beer on the camino. It isn't just that Yorkie's small, these were seriously big bottles ...


... the wine bottle must have held nearly a gallon. We couldn't take it with us though as we were carrying all our own gear: one of the things that makes a pilgrim a true pilgrim rather than simply a plastic one.

But I won't set off on that hobby horse again, so it's time to end. I hope you enjoyed travelling with us to Santiago via the blog.

We don't have a new adventure to report yet, but we'll be back soon with news of life in the Bear Cave.

Lots of love Gio, on behalf of the Camino bears xxx

Gio's Signage Selection

Sorry for recent blog silence, but we've all got jigsaw addiction and when you start puzzling, evenings disappear before you know it!

But back to the Camino, It never ceases to amaze me that I can set off on a walk of several hundred miles without a proper map, and not get lost.

That this is possible, is all due to the amazing sign posting along the way. The traditional yellow arrow painted onto features (hopefully permanent ones!) indicating the way ahead, is the simplest and oldest way mark. It is all that is needed and works perfectly. You can't imagine the good feeling and reassurance that seeing your next yellow arrow brings.


On our recent trip there was just one place where more yellow arrows are needed and this was in the heart of the large town of Ponferrada. Normally, unless there is no other direction to go but ahead, you can see your next arrow. In Ponferrada there were stretches where this was not the case, and we had to keep going hoping and trusting another yellow arrow would appear; thankfully it always did!

While a yellow arrow is all that is needed, as the camino has got busier, the signage has got more sophisticated. Invariably the modern signs still include the yellow arrow, but they also include the traditional camino emblem of the cockleshell, appearing rather attractively and significantly as a sunburst.

The forms these twin emblems of the camino take are many and varied. Here are some of my favourites starting with the wall mounted tile, beautifully simple:


There were lots of these pseudo trig points along the way:


They were very good for seeing some way off and they also provided a fine perching point for a rest. The drawback was that they tended to attract a lot of graffiti - clearly many find the simple white background irresistible.

Occasionally we'd come across a 'one-off', seemingly the creation of the local municipality, and these were great as no two were ever the same.


I particularly liked the wooden ones as they always gave the impression of being hand made by a local craftsman.

However, these wooden ones, resembling the footpath signs at home, didn't seem to have quite the same touch of a craftsman. Mind you, by now we were getting very close to Santiago and, the closer we got, the less individual the signs seemed to be.


These last signs, however, were rather special as they appeared on the streets of Santiago leading up to the cathedral.


It was a good job that there were so many of them as the cathedral failed to reveal itself until almost the last moment. It certainly wasn't a case of being led in by the spires; mind you with so many pilgrims to follow, we could hardly get lost.

Lots of love Gio and friends xxx

The Big One

For any pilgrim, 'the big one' will always be the cathedral at Santiago. It is a fine church in it's own right, but, as the end point of the Camino, it has a significance far beyond it's outward appearance as a grand place of worship.

I always had the impression that the cathedral was the heart of Santiago and would dominate the city. We were therefore all very surprised that it took so long to catch our first glimpse of the famous towers. We seemed to have been walking through Santiago streets for ages before, all of a sudden, and completely unannounced, they suddenly appeared ...


I got very excited and even more so when, a few minutes later, it was there in front of me, in all it's splendour. What a facade! Despite the square being quite busy, I could have sat there in silence and admired it for ages.


However, the other chaps were keen to see inside so in we went. We weren't surprised by the rather ornate, and to us overdecorated, surrounds to the centrepiece of St James, but we were surprised that it was much smaller than it's outward facade implied.


There are 2 aspects to the cathedral that stay with you. Firstly, the botafumeiro; we talked about it at the time we were there, but none of us will every forget it's size, it's crazy swing and the ethereal singing from the amazing singing nun that accompanied it - simply awe inspiring.

The second lasting impression is that it is very much a shrine to St James. As a non Catholic, I kept wondering where Jesus was. St James was after all a disciple, not Jesus. I hunted around to see if I could find Jesus in the cathedral and I managed it, he was on the wall by one of the side doors. I still feel he should have far more prominence.

The cathedral takes on a whole dimension though, once you've picked up your Compostella. I was so pleased and proud when mine was awarded to me. There is no better place to have a picture taken with your compostela, than in front of the cathedral


I don't think I'd have felt the same way about the cathedral if I hadn't walked there. I can't imagine just flying into Santiago and going to visit. I guess I'm the lucky one, whose had the marvellous opportunity of walking there.

Lots of love Gio and my fellow camino bears xxx

Gio's Church Selection

I'm sure you won't be too surprised to hear that we did visit one or two churches along the way. The numbers weren't as great as you might think, due to the fact that, as we found on our earlier trip, the Spanish do tend to keep their churches locked. It's a great shame.

Quite soon into this trip, we walked through the big city of Leon. The Camino took us right past the entrance to this magnificent cathedral ...


The office where we went to get a stamp for our pilgrim passports was just after the rather fine screen in our next picture...


The artwork was so intricate that there was almost too much to see. I concentrated on the colours instead as I'm a simple soul, and found some of the frills too much.

In contrast, I really loved the simplicity of the church at Rabanal. It was just outside the albergue we stayed at, run by the English Co-fraternity of St James. It was very old and very peaceful. When we arrived a French pilgrim was playing his recorder inside and it sounded wonderful.


A few days later we went into a church that was open and, while the church was not really to my taste, with a bit too much gold and heavy decoration, I was more pleased that you can imagine, to see my old friend St. Roch, with his dog, again. We saw St Roch quite a lot in France but only occasionally in Spain. He is the patron saint of pilgrims and was a similar sort of figure to St Francis of Assisi, so, with me being a Franciscan bear, there is an immediate affinity.


You'll always know if you've seen St Roche as he always has his very distinctive thigh wound and the dog who saved his life by bringing him food when he was sick, at his feet.

We'll talk a bit more about the big one, Santiago Cathedral, next time.

Lots of love Gio xxx