Bears on Trains

After our visit to Dorset, Polar and Grizzly started to drive us home.  It was a very windy day and we were sometimes a little scared during our journey, although our human guardians drove very carefully.  Polar showed us the cottage where her great-granddad used to live, in a small town called Sturminster Newton.  

When we stopped for lunch, we made a quick visit to the Abbey at Malmesbury and met a group of small bear monks!  Then we drove north through Worcestershire, passing near Leominster and Ludlow, which was very pretty countryside.  We asked Polar if we could visit again one day and she said we might.

That night, we stayed in a lovely little hotel with a beautiful garden, with plans to visit the Cosford RAF Museum in the morning.  While our human guardians had their dinner, we bears read through all the tourist information leaflets in the room.

'Look!' cried Hanley Bear.  'There's a Steam Gala on the Severn Valley Railway this weekend.  We had better tell Grizzly.  He loves trains even more than planes.'

Grizzly was very grateful to us and the next morning, we went back to Bridgnorth.  There was a steam engine waiting to leave with a train of lovely old-fashioned carriages.  Polar likes old trains too, because she says they have more leg room than modern trains.  We like them, because they have little tables and arm-rests that make great seats for small bears.

Endon was a little frightened of the engine at first, but Hanley and I had seen steam engines before, so told him that steam engines are quite safe for small bears.  We all enjoyed the first part of our trip down to Highley, where we visited the museum and engine sheds.  

When we got inside the museum, Polar let us out to look around.  We promised to be good bears and stay out of trouble while she took photos of passing trains from the balcony.  Hanley spotted a bright red locomotive which he decided to explore.

I climbed up onto another locomotive, which I saw was built  in Crewe, which is not far from Grizzly and Polar's house.

Endon Bear found an engine that he liked too, and climbed up to look at all the pipes and valves.  We thought it was a funny shape, as it had a square-shaped body, while the others were all round.  Grizzly told us it was called a 'pannier tank'.

After we had pretended to drive our trains for a little while, Hanley, Endon and I ran along to see the carriages in the museum.  We couldn't find a way into the royal train carriage but we did explore the Royal Mail mobile sorting office.

'If I sit here, I wonder if I'll get sent back to Stoke-on-Trent?' said Hanley.

'I don't know about that,' I said.  'If we stay here too long, we'll miss our next steam train journey.  Polar and Grizzly will be looking for us to take us back to the station.'

Soon, we were on our way again, heading to Kidderminster.  By now, it was raining quite hard so we couldn't enjoy the view, but we liked smelling the steam from the engine and waving to the people inside the trains we passed.  

A little way from Kidderminster, we passed over the River Severn.  Polar told us that she hoped we could visit on Uppie one day, although you cannot come this far up the river safely by boat.

When we arrived in Kidderminster, we could get a close look at our locomotive, the fantastic Duchess of Sutherland.  We thought it was a magnificent engine.

'I wonder what will haul our train back to Bridgnorth?' said little Endon.

I didn't mind, as long as we had nice springy seats to jump on in our carriage!

 These lovely teak carriages were perfect for us bears.  There were arm-rests in the compartments that made perfect bear platforms where we could stand and look out of the window.

Hanley was fascinated by the way the windows opened, using a leather strap, although he had to stop playing with it, as it started raining again as we left the station.  As we couldn't see out very well, we decided to spend a lot of the return journey playing bear games and climbing on things.  We got right up into the luggage rack!  If you look carefully, you might see us again, reflected in the mirror underneath us.

It was very wet when we got back to Bridgnorth.  Polar took some more photographs while Grizzly sheltered us bears by putting the bear bag - and us - inside his rucksack.  It was very, very rainy all the way home but we were happy little bears after our fun day out and soon fell fast asleep on the back seat of Polar and Grizzly's little red car.