A Visit to Hampton Court

Hanley Bear and I are having such interesting lives on land that I sometimes forget I am a Boat Bear and that I started this blog to tell the story of my journey from Sonning to Stoke-on-Trent.

After Polar helped me to make my life-jacket, I felt much safer out on the mighty River Thames.  When we were on the move, I usually sat in the little triangular room at the front of the boat looking out of the front window, although I preferred to sit in the lifebelt on the roof so I could listen to Grizzly and Polar talking to each other and learn about where we were going.

As we came into London, the river got bigger and bigger.  There was no longer any countryside beside us, although there were huge parks and very pretty gardens.  Polar is very interested in gardens and she wanted to visit some famous ones before we left London.  The first was at Hampton Court Palace. 

Polar and Grizzly didn't know that there were excellent moorings right outside the palace grounds, as their map book didn't show them, so they had a long walk there from some scruffy moorings beside a park in a place called Molesey.  Grizzly said it was too far for a small bear to walk, so I stayed on board, reading the boat guides, talking to passing swans and eating grapes. 

Grizzly and Polar came home quite late, because there had been so much to see and do at Hampton Court.  They wanted to go back there so, the next morning, we cruised down to the nice moorings right beside Hampton Court Palace and I could see it for myself.  Of all the buildings I had seen beside the Thames, this was the most remarkable!  It was made from thousands of little red bricks, probably not much bigger than me, and had towers and turrets and the most incredible twisty chimney pots.

When Polar and Grizzly went off to explore the parks around the palace, I climbed up the bank from the boat and wriggled under some fancy gold-painted gates to get into the palace gardens.  I had never seen so many beautiful flowers!  I ran around smelling the scented ones, being very careful not to get in the way of the bees who were visiting too.  There was a sloping green lawn along both sides of the flower garden which I discovered was great fun to roll down, although I had to be very careful to wait until I wouldn't be seen and to stay away from the remote-controlled lawnmower one of the gardeners was using to cut the grass.

When I had done plenty of rolling, I scampered towards the palace itself, keeping close to the hedges so I was out of sight.  I wanted to go inside, because I thought it would be fun to climb up the wooden staircases and tapestries I had read about in Grizzly's guide book, or even to climb the brick chimney pots.  However, on my way through the gardens, I came across something even more interesting that I wanted to climb - a gigantic grape vine!  Grapes are one of my favourite foods, as you know, so I simply had to take a closer look.

The Great Vine, which is the biggest grape vine in the whole world, lives inside a huge greenhouse.  I waited until a group of people had left the viewing area before scurrying inside and climbing up to read the notices about it.  I could hardly believe it when I saw that it was almost two-hundred and fifty years old!  It was covered in lovely big bunches of sweet, black grapes, which I could smell were almost ripe, and it was the perfect shape for a small bear to climb, with a big, knotty main trunk and lots of branches.  I looked everywhere for a way in to the Vine House but, no matter how hard I searched, I simply couldn't find a vent or gap big enough to squeeze through.  Because it was sunny, there were windows open high up in the roof of the glass house, but I couldn't climb up to those, because glass is too slippery for bear paws to grip. 

'I wonder what else there is to eat in this garden?' I thought.  I assumed all gardens had food plants in them, because the plants in Uppie's roof garden included geraniums, which are flowers, but also lettuces, tomatoes and peppers, which are for eating.  Sure enough, near the Vine House there was a patio area covered in little trees in pots, all of which had fruit on them.  I saw that they were citrus fruits, lemons and oranges, but when I sneaked in between the pots and tried to eat one of the fruits, I found it was horribly sharp, because it wasn't ripe.  I kept wiping my mouth with my paws and licking my lips, but it took ages for the nasty taste to go away.  I felt very sad and quite hungry, so I decided to go back to the boat, where I could eat some more of my green grapes and wait for Grizzly and Polar to come home.

I must have made a wrong turn, however, because when I squeezed under a fence to get out, I found myself in a park with lots of open space, woods and a herd of deer.  The deer were rather suspicious of me to start with, as they don't see many small bears, but I spoke to them very politely when I asked directions back to the river and the boats, and they showed me where I had to go.  The quickest way back, they said, was to go under the fence into the gardens again, then to follow a path past lots of flower beds.  Lucky for me, there were very few people this far from the palace, so I could run along the path without having to hide until, suddenly, I saw something coming towards me. 

It looked like a bus but, instead of having a noisy, smelly engine, it was pulled by two enormous horses!  I wanted to say hello to the horses but the bus was full of people so I had to hide and watch them go past, before running to the end of the path and back to the fancy gates.  I easily slipped under these because I was an even smaller bear than I had been in the morning, as I hadn't found anything at all to eat during my day out.  I was very glad to get back to Uppie and even happier when Grizzly and Polar came home and made us tea.