Three Bears go to Dinosaur Island

As I mentioned in my previous post, we had a long train journey (two train journeys, in fact) to visit Grizzly's grandcubs recently. 

While we were staying at their house, as well as playing with their toys and seeing some of our furry friends from our previous visits, we went with them to Dinosaur Island.

When the human cubs said where we were going, the smaller bears were afraid we would be eaten by real dinosaurs.  I remembered the dinosaur statue in the centre of the village.

'I'm sure there won't be real dinosaurs there!' I said to Hanley and Endon.  'Or, if there are, they will be nice ones that won't eat us.  After all, they haven't eaten the human cubs.'

'The human cubs are bigger than us,' Hanley replied.  'Just because they haven't been eaten, it doesn't mean we won't be!'  Endon and I agreed he had a point and so we told Polar and Grizzly we wanted to stay indoors and play with the Lego instead. 

'There are no real dinosaurs there,' Polar assured us.  'It's an adventure playground and they boys really want you to come with us.'  We trust Polar, so we agreed to go, but you can imagine how frightened we were when we reached the park and the first thing we saw was a big, brown dinosaur!

'Agh!' cried little Endon.  'It's a Triceratops.  I bet it eats small bears!'

'No, it eats plants,' Hanley Bear answered, knowledgably.  'I'll show you it's nothing to be scared of.'  He scrambled out of our bag and ran towards the dinosaur.

'Careful it doesn't bite you, or stab you with one of those horns!' I called out.

Hanley Bear climbed up and stood on the horn above the triceratop's nose.

'Wow Hanley!' said Endon.  'You're such a brave bear!'

'Not really,' Hanley replied.  'It's made of wood!'

Hanley was right.  There were other dinosaurs all around the park, with human cubs climbing all over them, but none of them were roaring or biting, because they were all wooden!  

We were very relieved.  We watched Grizzly's grandcubs playing with their friends, climbing and sliding and even flying through the air on a zip-wire.  Hanley and Endon went to play hide-and-seek with the cubs.  I had to look the other way while they found places to hide, then help to find them. 

When it was time for snacks, they shared their Bear chews with us and gave us the cards from inside the wrappers, because they are very kind human cubs.

We were sad when it was time to go home, as Dinosaur Island had been lots of fun, but when we got back to their house, we remembered there were lots of other fun things to do when we're visiting Grizzly's grandcubs, like playing table football, building Lego things and running in the garden.

And we get cub hugs too!

Bears on Trains

We went to visit Grizzly's grandcubs last weekend.  We always enjoy seeing the grandcubs, who are very kind and love small bears, and we like playing with their Star Wars toys and building things with their Lego, but we don't usually enjoy the journey to and from their house.  

Polar and Grizzly take it in turns to drive their little car along some nasty, busy roads full of fast cars and big lorries called the M6, M40 and M25, while we sit in our bear basket on the back seat with our paws over our eyes, hoping we will arrive safely. 

This time, however, instead of going in the little red car, we caught the train.  Polar found a rucksack we could sit in, on top of her camera bag, so we could see where we were going.  Grizzly ordered a taxi to the station and we arrived in plenty of time.  This meant Hanley and I could show Endon the little garden on the middle platform while we waited for our train.

A group of local people look after the gardens and have made them very pretty and a good place for small bears to play and explore.  The sun was out and the daffodils were starting to flower, so it felt a lot like spring.

'Come along, bears!' Polar called, when the signal changed for our train.  'We don't want to leave you behind!'

We jumped back into our rucksack and Polar carried us onto the train.  Polar and Grizzly found a table seat and Grizzly put his bag underneath ours, so we had good views out of the window.

Soon, we reached Stoke-on-Trent station, then we were out into the countryside.  As we travelled south, I could show the other bears the canals I had travelled along on my way to Stoke-on-Trent.  When we got to a place called Milton Keynes, we had to get off the first train and wait for another one.

'This will take us further into London, then divert around the city centre and down to Croydon,' Grizzly explained.  'When we get there, we catch another train and then a bus.'

I was worried about all these changes of transport.  'Don't leave us behind anywhere!' I said to Polar.

'Don't worry, little Sonning,' she said.  'You bears are very important to us and you're travelling with my camera - I never go anywhere without that!'

Hanley Bear liked the next part of the journey because we could see Wembley Stadium.

'I wonder if I'll ever go there, to watch Stoke in the Cup Final?' he said to us.  Endon and I said we were sure he would, either next year or the year after, but we don't really know.

Then Polar showed us the Grand Union Canal branch that goes to Little Venice and Paddington, best known to us for it's famous bear.  We would definitely like to go there on board Uppie one day.  Polar said she and Grizzly went six years ago, before they had us bears in the crew, and had a marvellous time at the Cavalcade Festival.

Soon after that, the train crossed a bridge over the Thames.  Little Endon thought this was very exciting indeed.  We caught our last train at Croydon, as planned, and our bus arrived just after we got to Horsham station.  

'We'll be at the cubs' house soon,' I told the other bears.  

'I hope they will be really pleased to see us and let us play with all their brilliant toys,' said Hanley.  'I want to fly the X-wing again!'


'I hope they will let us have tea and naps first,' I replied.  It had been a very interesting journey and much nicer than driving along the horrible motorways, but I was still quite tired.

The human cubs had lots of adventures planned for us and wanted to play straight away, but luckily it was nearly dinner time when we arrived, so we got to have a little rest before the fun started.

Light Night

Although we like playing in the snow, when it is very cold or night-time, we bears prefer to curl up in our lovely snug bear basket, watching programmes about nature on the television or having a sleep.  We were very surprised when, one night last week, Polar woke us from an early evening nap to say we were going out.

'But it's all cold and icy!' I said, pulling the covers up to my chin.

'I know, bears,' said Polar.  'But there's a festival going on in Burslem that I think you will want to see.'

Having a festival on a freezing evening in February seemed a strange idea to us bears, but we put on our best jumpers, woolly hats and duffle coats and got into our bear bag.  Soon we were in the car and off to Burslem.

Burslem is one of the Six Towns of Stoke-on-Trent.  Hanley took me there when we were campaigning for Stoke-on-Trent to become City of Culture and I remembered that it had some very nice old buildings, including the library, the School of Art and the Town Hall.  I told Endon about them and how clever the humans were who had built them.

'It's a shame it will be dark and you won't be able to see them very well,' I said.  

But I was wrong!  Some of the best buildings were all lit up, with films being projected onto them.  

'Wow!' went Hanley Bear.  'That's brilliant!'

We wanted to get out of our bag and explore, but Grizzly said there were too many people about and we might get trodden on.

'You'll get a better view from up on my shoulder,' Polar added.

All along the road where the School of Art is, there were lots of sculptures with flames in them, and a man pushing a funny little stove on wheels.  All the fiery things and the crowds of people helped to keep us warm, although Polar was very careful to keep our fur away from the flames.

There were more fiery sculptures outside the School of Art, which kept flaring up and making us jump.

'Let's go into the main square and find a good spot to watch the main event,' said Polar.   

Grizzly bought us tea and pies to keep us warm while we waited.  Soon we heard drumming and some pretty, tinkling music coming from behind us.

'Look!' said Endon.  'There's a giant made of stars or ice!'

We all gasped, because the graceful, sparkling giant was such a lovely sight.  We waved to it and watched as it started to climb some scaffolding on a shop, then walked through the crowd towards a stage.

On the stage were some drummers.  They had lights all over their drums and costumes and strange make-up on their faces.  We bears thought they were slightly scary and they were very loud.  We preferred the gentle music that went with the giant.  

The giant and the drummers did some dances together on the stage.  At the end, the big giant bowed to all the people, then all his lights went out and we could see that he was a huge puppet, operated by long poles held by clever people in dark clothes.  Endon was sad when he saw that the star giant wasn't a real creature but he thought the people who had made him look real were very clever indeed.

Polar had wanted to take lots more pictures, but found her camera battery had gone flat.  She took some film and a few stills with Grizzly's small camera, but she was cross that she hadn't checked hers before coming out, as she would have liked me to have better pictures of the giant for my blog.

'Maybe they will come back and do another show next year?' said Hanley Bear, as we went back to the car.  

I hope there will be lots more festivals and fun things to do this year, or I won't have anything to put in my blog!

Fun in the Snow

Although our human guardians, Polar and Grizzly, think snow is a nuisance, we bears have been looking forward to some settling ever since the first showers started.

'It's snowing!' one of us would say and we would all gather by the window to see how much fell.  By bedtime, there would be a lovely white blanket over the plants in the front garden but, in the morning, when we jumped out of our bear basket to see if we could go out and play, it would either have melted or turned to nasty, slippery ice.  

'I'll never get to play in the snow at this rate!' little Endon complained.  After hearing about our adventures last year, he was very keen to make a snow bear and try out the toboggan.

Finally, last week, we had enough to enjoy.  We put our warm jumpers and little felt duffle coats on and Polar lifted our toboggan down from the shelf where she had kept it for us all year.

'Enjoy yourselves this morning,' she said.  'I'll have to clear the drive ready to get the car out for work later on today, but you can play for now.'

'Yay!' we cheered.  We went into the back garden first and jumped down the steps to where there was snow on the path.  Endon sniffed it suspiciously, then stepped forward and put one of his back paws into it.

'It's cold!' he said.

'We told you it was,' said Hanley Bear.  'But you can slide on it, make patterns in it and build things out of it.  We'll show you!'

We ran down the path, pointing out the bird footprints and keeping a careful look out, as there were cat prints too.  Endon got very nervous about that.

'If anyone sees a cat, we must all stick together and growl to scare it away!' I told the smaller bears.  

But there was no sign of the cat, so we set to work scraping up a pile of snow and shaping it into a snowbear.  It wasn't as good as the one we made last year, as there wasn't as much snow, but Endon was pleased with it.

'Let's race the toboggan now!' cried Hanley.  Endon and I agreed, so we ran back to the house and got Grizzly to let us out into the front garden, as the best place to toboggan is the driveway. 

We put Endon right at the front, Hanley behind him and there was just enough room for me to jump on at the back after pushing to start it moving.

'Wheeeeee!' Endon cheered as we hurtled down the drive.  'That's brilliant!'

We pushed the toboggan back to the top of the drive and raced down again and again.  We hid when we saw the postman coming, as we didn't know if he liked small bears, especially small bears making the driveway all slippery!

The next time we came down the drive, there was a big footprint in our way.  It was Polar's and she had the snow shovel.

'I was worried about the postman,' she said.  'I'm going to clear this side now but you can still race on the other side.'

'We're starting to get a bit cold,' I admitted.  'We think we might like to pack up for today and have a nice cup of chocolate and some mini stroopwafels'. 

'That's very sensible, little bears,' she said, picking us and our toboggan up and carrying us into the kitchen.  'You don't want to get frozen.'

We warmed up with our hot drink and, although we thought about going out for another toboggan ride, we decided to stay indoors.  

Now the snow has melted again but we can still have fun in the garden, looking at the pretty winter flowers, running up and down the path and climbing the shrubs, so we are very happy little bears.