Meeting the Vaarks

Today is a very special one, because two of our friends are getting married.  Their names are Dimitri and Matilda and they are Vaarks.  If you haven't heard of Vaarks before, read on, as I am going to tell you about when we met lots of them.

It was a wet morning when we left Manchester and cruised along the Bridgewater Canal, so we bears stayed in the cratch, watching as the tall towers of Manchester slipped behind us and we headed into the suburbs.  

Polar and Grizzly were making for Sale, because I had arranged to meet some of my friends from Twitter there.  

They arrived after lunch to have tea and cake with us on Uppie. The humans were Mrs Sue and Mr Alfred, who are very clever and creative, and with them were a whole bag full of Vaarks, small, squidgy creatures with long noses, button eyes and felt ears.  The Vaarks were all very friendly, even some of the slightly shy ones, and we became great friends straight away.

We gathered for a photo in the cratch, being very careful not to step on the tiniest Vaarks, Microvaark and miniscule Nanovaark, who you can just see sitting in the centre of the painted daisy.  We were also introduced to Ratvaark, Esther, Fury, Winston, Hypnovaark, Ernest, Ofelia, Bernard and of course Matilda and Dimitri, whose wedding was today.  

I might have missed a couple of Vaarks as I can count fourteen of them in the photo and I've only got twelve names, so big hugs and bigger apologies to them both!  

There were also Peggy and her boyfriend, but I'm afraid I can't remember his name either.  Fourteen Vaarks, two dollies and two new humans is a lot of names for a small bear to remember in one day.

Polar had bought us some special small bear-sized cakes to share with our friends.  It was just as well there were plenty of them, as three hungry bears and fourteen Vaarks can eat rather a lot of cake!  While the humans chatted about all sorts of things, we enjoyed our afternoon tea.

It helped the Vaarks to relax and forget that they were on a boat, as they are not built for swimming and were nervous about being on the water.  Soon, all the cakes were gone!

We helped the Vaarks to explore Uppie.  While Mrs Sue took some photographs of Nano and Micro playing on Grizzly's little model railway, Mr Alfred told Grizzly all about a very special building project he and Mrs Sue had been involved in, which we would visit later in our journey.

All too soon, it was time for our friends to set off home.  We hugged all the Vaarks and their human friends, big and small, and promised to stay in touch and get together again, hopefully one day soon.  In the meantime, we can follow their adventures on their website: https://www.mousevaarks.co.uk/

The next day, we travelled on down the Bridgewater Canal.  It stayed very rainy, so we watched from the cratch again.  There were some very strange modern buildings at Altringham and some old ones too.  We hope this old printworks is being turned into something nice.

We moored out in the Cheshire countryside, near a big country house called Dunham Massey, which we would visit in the morning.  It was very peaceful, but still rainy.  

There was a very big heron fishing close to the boat and some swans, which can be fierce, so we bears stayed indoors and Hanley Bear helped Grizzly get the tea.  

We had enjoyed being boat bears in the big city but it was lovely being back in the countryside again.