A Great Day Out in Stoke-on-Trent

Although Hanley Bear is worried that he will jinx Stoke-on-Trent's bid to become a Channel 4 Creative Hub if he supports it too keenly, I don't think that stops us from telling people about great things to see and do here, especially when it's something as good as the Etruria Canal Festival.

This happens every year and is a super mix of handsome heritage canal boats gathering together, arts and craft stalls, music and dance, and people from all the different communities in the city come along to enjoy the day.  There are lots of fun activities for human cubs too.  Because it is free to come in, everybody can enjoy it, even if they don't have very much money.  

Hanley, Endon and I were there yesterday, with Polar and Grizzly.  Grizzly was helping the local Inland Waterways Association branch on their information and sales stall, while Polar was able to class her day out as 'work' since she was looking after the Citizens Advice stall with some of her friends.  Tina and Lisa both love us bears and took it in turns to take us around the site to meet other friends, so we didn't get bored while Polar was busy.  

Hanley Bear was particularly pleased to see Tina again, as she is the human who rescued him last year, and she was delighted to see him too.  We also saw our friends B'Oatcake Kay and Rob the Locks there.  In fact, it seemed everybody in the Potteries was there!  Polar said it was far too busy for us to leave our bear bag and explore on our own and even when she took a break, she kept us in it most of the time.  We went to see our IWA friends first and a very kind lady called Ann gave me a super bookmark she had made for me with my picture on, which was a lovely surprise, and we had our pictures taken as 'celebrity' visitors because I publish extracts from my memoires in their Knobsticks magazine!  

Then we went to see the boats and the nice people who live on them, and Polar let us have a close-up look at the lovely painting on one called Darley and the pretty cabin of another called Badger.  We loved all the heritage boats but we love Uppie too, even though Uppie isn't a heritage boat, and we hope to have some days out on the canals again soon.

Of course there were lots of people making and selling nice things at the festival, because Stoke-on-Trent is a city full of creative and artistic people.  Polar loved some T-shirts, with hand-drawn Potteries-inspired designs by Lisa's friend Wenda, and we also met Mel, who makes marvellous jewellery from scraps of broken vintage pottery.  We really liked that idea, because we bears don't approve of the way humans waste things and this is a very clever way of turning broken things into something beautiful and useful.

On the way back to her information stall, Polar let us out of the bear bag for a few moments to see a bear-sized Gypsy caravan at the B-Arts stall.  B-Arts are the group who manage the festival and lots of other creative community projects.  We loved the caravan and imagined what fun it would be to live in one and travel around the country, like we do on Uppie, but on roads instead.  The only problem would be finding a tiny enough pony to pull it for us! 

When we got back to Polar's stall we listened carefully to what she and her friends were telling people about their rights and benefits, although it is all very complicated if you are only a small bear.  Polar has included us in her team of Benefits Champions as Bear-nefits Champions, which is quite an honour, as the others are all humans.  We will have to study hard to keep up with them.  Luckily, we found there is a very wise Citizens Advice owl to help us!

We were such tired bears when we got home that we soon snuggled down to sleep in our bear basket, and we all dreamed about the brightly-painted boats, the cosy little caravan and all the clever and kind people we had met.  We are already looking forward to going next year!