Nature Notes Again

How are you all getting on in the snow? Norfolk was one of the first counties to get the snow which means we've had a very white lookout since Monday night. We're getting a bit fed up of it now, as it means that we're not getting out as much as we'd like to, and things we enjoy keep getting cancelled, but at least we've managed to stay safe and warm.

However, we are working very hard at looking after our feathered friends. We've been keeping the feeders topped up and putting out apples and dried fruit for the bigger birds. We've also been putting out water as the bird bath is frozen over.

Watching all the birds tucking into the food we've provided, gives me hours of fun. One very regular visitor over the last few days, whom I'm always pleased to see, is Woody, our greater spotted woodpecker. He is a great customer as he's happy to eat most things. The fat balls seem to be his favourite at the moment but he also enjoys peanuts and sunflower seeds.

As many of our readers will know all too well, as soon as you put out bird food, especially peanuts, some less welcome visitors quickly arrive on the scene.

We have 2 squirrels who have taken over the tawny owls' nesting box (cheeky!) and they demolish peanuts at an incredible rate. I don't mind too much if it keeps them off the other bird food and I suppose even squirrels have to eat to keep warm this weather.

Talking about keeping warm, we wandered down to our local hostelry in the week and found a rather unusual customer outside ...

Well, we do live in the countryside, so I guess we shouldn't really be surprised, as a pint of beer in a cosy pub has a lot more appeal than a cold, dark and snowy field. Where were his friends though?

Lots of love Chelmer and friends xxx

P.S. our Muscovy friend from last week, didn't like the snow and left us when it arrived; we like to think he has gone to Pensthorpe.

Chelmer's Nature Notes is Back

Dear readers, Chelmer here, to tell you about the latest unusual visitor to our Bear Cave garden. Our visitor was of the feathered variety, and arrived completely unannounced yesterday.

We have a notebook and pen in the kitchen ready to record new sightings, but this species had not made it onto the list even after 10 years of spotting.  I wasn't quite sure who our new friend was initially, but I did know it wasn't a seagull as one of our number (who shall remain nameless) was heard to claim. I knew it was a duck of some sort, and I'll show you my picture now, to give you an opportunity to identify it before I tell you what type it was ...

... actually he wasn't in my bird book so I had to use the internet to look him up. I quickly identified him as a Muscovy. He is actually quite shy and, as yet, rather suspicious of bears, so I couldn't get in the photo with him, or particularly close. I had to retreat as I was clearly disturbing his repose, and I wanted him to settle down again.

He didn't seem to be injured, but we thought he might be hungry, especially as it was such a cold day yesterday. Our internet research told us Muscovy ducks like fruit and vegetable peelings, including potato peelings, so as we prepared our roast dinner veg, we saved all the peelings and took them out to our friend.

He is still with us today, although difficult to spot now amongst all the snow we have. We went out earlier to see if he needed more food, but he is so timid that we caused him to fly off. Hopefully he'll soon realise we only want to help, but we hope even more, that he'll rejoin family and friends and find his way home soon.

Lots of love, Chelmer and friends xxx

Out with the Old ...

The New Year is now well underway and, on Sunday, we admired our new Christmas tree for the last time until next Christmas. Before the rather sad tree undressing ceremony, we turned off the lounge lights so our tree's lights could shine without competition. 

 

Gerry, Louis and I (Gio) were lurking in the branches, ready to take off the decorations. Can you see us, looking rather like decorations ourselves? 

Just as we've ended one year and started another, so the time has come to finish our Mont Blanc posts and start some new adventures. 

You may recall that by the end of our last Mont Blanc post, the walking was complete, but there was still a free day to enjoy the delights of Chamonix. We had a very relaxed day looking round and liked what we saw. 

We visited the church and admired the stained glass windows depicting the outdoor activities for which the town is famous ... 

... we visited lots of outdoor shops - our favourite type of shop - and picked up some great bargains in the Quecha shop (we should definitely have more Quecha shops over here). We then found a pleasant restaurant for a spot of lunch. Yorkie very definitely approved of the duck crepe. 

 

We spent the afternoon watching an international climbing competition in the main square. 

Men climbed the face on the left and women the slightly different face on the right. The big screens you see to the right of our picture, gave us close up views of the techniques of both climbers. As soon as a climber fell off they were replaced by another competitor. It was non stop action and completely fascinating. We spent several hours watching and only left to in search of an ice cream before returning to our campsite via a pleasant riverside walk. 

In the evening we had our final group meal and, realised it was probably time to go home, when, after several dry days, it started raining again. 

We left for Geneva airport and home the next day. We had enjoyed a marvellous adventure and thoroughly recommend the Tour de Mont Blanc to anyway who is up for a great walking challenge. 

Back soon, lots of love

George, Yorkie and Gio xxx

Happy New Year!

We hope it's not too late to wish all our readers a Happy New Year - sorry we missed wishing you a Happy Christmas!

We enjoyed some of the best ever New Year celebrations last night. It was simply great that we had the Suffolk and Midlands Branch bears staying with us, and it is undoubtedly the case that a house full of bears is a happy house.

The evening started off in the best possible way with a wonderful Thai meal prepared by our very own Chef Oakley.  While Oakley was busy preparing the meal, those of us who aren't much help in the kitchen sorted through some fireworks, ready for later.

By the time we'd finished dining, it had, unfortunately, started to rain. We were a little dismayed as fireworks and rain don't mix. However, we still had pudding to go, and Oakley had really excelled himself, conjuring up a take on a Heston special, a reconstructed Black Forest gateau, with the posh name of a 'buche'.

Polly's nephew, Helmut, who is motorcycle crazy, tested the strength of the chocolate casing by riding along the top (we think he was trying to reconstruct the opening rooftop bike sequence in Skyfall). The chocolate was of excellent quality and very smooth, so stood up to the riding test (we had insisted on a drive through a disinfectant bath first).

Pudding was so delicious we lingered over it, long enough for it to have stopped raining by the time plates were scraped clean. We all trooped outside to see our big box of fireworks go off. Police girl Polly, being a very responsible type, acted as chief pyromaniac for us, and took charge of lighting.

It was a splendid selection and gave us a feast of colours, bangs, whistles, splutters and fizzes - all very  exciting stuff. We were sad when they were over, but not for long, as back inside the Bear Cave we settled down to a few games of Boggle and Jenga - all fiercely competitive, with Branch honour at stake.

After toasting the New Year, we headed back outside for a midnight launch of some sky lanterns, kindly supplied by the Suffolk Branch ...

We'd seen them before, but this was the first time we'd lit and launched one. We all took a turn at sending one off into the dark sky and making a wish. We thought it was quite magical and a special moment.

The New Year had started very well for us, we hope it has for you too.

Love from all in Norfolk, Suffolk and Midlands Branches xxx

Success and Sadness

A short distance on from our last photos, we met a lady sitting in the sun and using her binoculars to look across to Mont Blanc. Being friendly bears we stopped to say hello and the lady told us that she knew someone who was climbing the mountain that day, and she was attempting to follow progress.

We didn't realise this was possible from the far side of the valley where we were, but our leader Simon, pointed out that it was possible to see footsteps in the snow, on the route up to the summit. We took a closer look and saw that he was right. It made the climb to the top of Mont Blanc seem far more real to us. We were almost a part of it.

Thinking about what it would be like to climb Mont Blanc, kept us occupied on the final push to the Le Brevent, which was our summit for the day and the last one of our Tour de Mont Blanc. Here we are at the top ...

... we could see for miles so it was great to be sitting on a table which mapped out for us all the surrounding mountains that we could see.

Our pleasure at being here and having completed the final climb of our Tour, was brought to a sudden end when the news came in of the avalanche that had occurred earlier that morning on an approach mountain to Mont Blanc, and killed many climbers. We were stunned and, as we looked towards Mont Blanc again, it looked calm and serene as though nothing had happened, but we couldn't view it the way we had just minutes earlier. We did hope the lady we'd spoken to earlier was not going to be involved in this tragedy.

But life goes on, and we couldn't stay too sad for long. We needed to celebrate our completion of the Tour de Mont Blanc and enjoy our final leisurely descent back to Chamonix. We were so high that to get back down required 2 cable cars, if we chose to use them. We decided to walk down to Plan Praz, the half way point, as we didn't like the thought of our walking being over. It was also quite an exciting descent as, in season, it is a black ski run. It was very steep, and, in places, there was snow.

Someone, not us, had been snowman building - we thought it was a lovely touch and a far more sensible activity than tight rope walking, without a safety net, over a huge drop. It was exciting to watch but complete madness.

After just over 500 metres of steep descent we reached Plan Praz, still high at 2000m. We were walking with our minders and 2 lovely ladies from our group, Julie and Jonquil. When we saw there was a restaurant with a lovely outdoor seating area, we all agreed we should celebrate our achievement with a bottle of wine.

It was lovely to share it with friends and to know that we were now Tour de Mont Blanc veterans. It ranks along with our walk to Santiago de Compostella, as our greatest walking achievement.

We had tickets provided for the cable car descent to Chamonix and we took it, as we had done all we needed to and we'd completed the most interesting part of the descent.

We were looking forward to joining up with the rest of our group at our campsite and celebrating our joint success.

Lots of love, George, Yorkie and Gio xxx

Almost There!

The day after our rest day, we found out exactly why we'd had a rest day: it was because the final 2 day's walking were going to be very challenging, and provide the hardest walking of the Tour.

We were told not to worry, as we had all improved our fitness since the start, and we should be able to take it comfortably in our stride. And so, we didn't worry, and it was fine.

Our penultimate day started off with some reasonable ups, interspersed with flatter sections and even a down, to our first coffee stop, which was in the plateau just north east of centre in our first picture.

The coffee stop was something of a carrot, so we didn't rebel at what was coming next! This was a big climb up the Col de Tricot. We would have to climb some 600 metres in a kilometre (I think we've got that right but the memory is fading now).

As we drank our coffee we were able to study the path, and see all the zig zags that were needed to get us so high in so short a distance. Apparently the guide book time for the climb is about 3 hours.  We needed nothing like that time. We romped up just ahead of our female minder who made it to the top in under an hour and our male minder also did well, arriving at the top just over 10 minutes later.

The top might have been the end of the hard work but there were still several hours more walking ahead of us, taking in a big suspension bridge. We finished the day by catching a bus back to the Los Bossons campsite, outside Chamonix where we'd spent out first night. It felt strange, but nice, to be back.

The next morning we started our final day's walking straight from the campsite. This was an even bigger day's walk than the day before. We had just over 1500m of climb ahead of us to the top of the Brevent.

We had plenty of time though so we took it nice and steady. We didn't want to hurry anyway as it was our last day and we knew that when it was over, the Tour would be over. After our first coffee stop we left the pine forests behind and were out in the open with the most amazing views of Mont Blanc and its surrounding peaks.

It was spectacular beyond words, which is why we won't say too much about these views; we'll just let our photos speak for themselves.

At this point we still weren't at the top, but you can see how high we were when you see how far below us Chamonix is.

We won't hurry our account of this excellent final walking day, so we'll be back soon with part 2.

Lots of love George, Yorkie and Gio xxx

Our Active Rest Day

We ended our last post telling you that we were spending the night at a campsite that was part of a leisure complex. It turned out to be quite a complex, with every activity from archery and horse riding to swimming and crazy golf. This was great for us, as we were in fact spending 2 nights at this site, as we were about to have our second rest day.

We were very happy as there was loads for us to do. As well as the camp site activities, we could walk along the river into the French market town of Contamines. We did this in the morning, after a lie in and leisurely breakfast. As a bonus, it was market day, so we were able to explore lots of fascinating French market stalls who liked the look of us bears, and offered us lots of tastes of olives, cheese and saucisson. We were very happy to accept and to tell them how they tasted to an English bear's palate.

In fact we were so relaxed and had such a fine time, that we forgot to take any photographs, which wasn't good news for our blog. It did show that we were taking our day off very seriously though.

All is not lost though, we did remember a photo or 2 in the afternoon, when we went to the rock climbing area, a short walk from the campsite.

To start off, we made ourselves comfortable in the sun and watched our 2 leaders Simon and Ben showing us how it is done.

It was a big face, which is why Ben looks so small. Both chaps are good climbers though and made it look easy, so easy in fact that we were inspired to have a go ourselves. Regular readers will know that Yorkie and I are keen (and competitive) climbers, but Gio is more of a novice. We therefore tackled a smaller and easier face and put Gio in between us.

Gio did very well, but when we suggested moving onto something bigger, he developed an urge to play crazy golf and, correctly pointed out, that if we didn't do it now, we would run out of time. And so, we went off to play crazy golf, and we were very glad we did, as it was a bigger and more interesting course than we tend to get in England.

We dined in the campsite restaurant that evening. and had pork cheeks again (yum), with berries which turned the meat a very interesting purple colour. It was another great meal though and, after it, we knew we'd be ready for more walking the next day.  

Lots of love, George, Yorkie and Gio xxx