A Christmas Cruise

Hello everyone and Happy New Year!  Hanley, Endon and I have been busy bears already this year but, before I tell you about our first 2019 adventures, I want to share some Christmas memories with you.

We bears had a wonderful time, because we spent most of the holidays on Polar and Grizzly's narrowboat, Uplander II ('Uppie').  We love being on the boat, because it is small and cosy.  Polar brought some Christmas decorations and we wore our best sock jumpers, so everything looked very festive.

We went aboard on Christmas Eve.  We were glad we had wrapped up warm, because the boat was quite cold at first.  Once Polar had lit the fire, it soon warmed up and the sun came out too, which made everything look much more cheerful.

We watched the scenery from one of the windows, as Polar had made us a hammock from one of her scarves. It was lovely and snug, because we could pull it over our back paws and up to our tummies to keep us warm.  We were very lucky bears and saw two kingfishers on our journey.

After a sunny afternoon cruising quietly up the Macclesfield Canal, Polar and Grizzly moored at Congleton Wharf.  We hadn't been here before and thought it looked very nice and a good place to stop for the night.  

Unfortunately, the local ducks were very noisy, either pecking at the side of the boat to eat the algae off it, or quacking at each other late into the night, then some geese joined them who were even noisier.  We gave them hard stares out of the window, but they took no notice at all!

We had mini mincemeat tarts for Christmas Eve tea, then settled down and tried to sleep in a bed Polar made for us from the hammock scarf and some cushions.  Despite the noise from the ducks and geese, we eventually fell asleep and, when we woke up, it was Christmas Day!

'Presents for everyone!' cried Hanley Bear as soon as it was light, pulling them all out of their bag.  'I wonder what we've got?'

We all worked together to open two thin but quite heavy little parcels we had been sent by our Twitter friend Gecko.

She had sent us two lovely vintage books about things we love learning about - canals and railways - and they are a perfect size and weight for small bears to read.  We have added them to what Gecko calls our 'Libeary' of special small books.

Polar and Grizzly said we were going to have a few hours boating before we had Christmas dinner.  We watched from our hammock as we went under some of the very pretty 'turnover' bridges that the Macclesfield Canal is famous for, across an aqueduct beside the Dane Valley viaduct (no trains on Christmas Day!) and all through the countryside to the locks at Bosley.

Polar and Grizzly had to work the boat up through the bottom lock to turn it round, then bring it back down again, as we were going back towards Kidsgrove in the morning.  There was a very high hill near where we moored called 'The Cloud', which we couldn't see very well because it was hidden by low clouds!  

Polar gave us small bear dinners of turkey and vegetables before she and Grizzly tucked in to theirs, then we enjoyed a quiet evening reading our books and listening to a special concert on the radio about Paddington Bear, which was the perfect end to this small bear's Christmas.  

But we still had more boating adventures to come!