A Snowy Walk

We bears were hoping to build another, even bigger, Arctic armoured bear in the front garden today but, although there was some snow overnight, there wasn't enough for that. Instead, while the smaller bears have naps, I am having a writing day.

The snow earlier this week was very heavy but Polar and Grizzly have grippy things to go on their boots so they can walk safely on icy ground, and this meant we could go for a walk.  You can see from this footprint how they work.

We bears all tucked into the bigger Bear Bag, which has room for a spare lens for Polar's camera and snuggling blankets for us, and we set of with our human guardians for the woods at Parrot's Drumble, where we saw the bluebells in the spring.

It is close enough to our house that our human guardians can walk there, and there are lovely views across the fields to the farms and cottages on the way, although we had never seen so much snow there before.

'It's like being in the Arctic!' said Hanley.

The path to the woods looked very pretty, but it was very soggy and muddy under the snow, so we had to stay in our bag rather than being allowed out for a run.

Polar and Grizzly found it was slippery underfoot even with their special grippers on, but they carefully picked their way along the edge of the track until we reached the nature reserve.

Waverley stayed snug in the Bear Basket but Hanley, Endon and I were allowed to have a little run and play where it wasn't too muddy.  All the trees were covered in snow and, although we could hear human cubs playing somewhere in the woods, we couldn't see any other people.

'This is very pretty,' said Polar, when we had gone a little way into the woods.  'The problem is, where the path is so slippery, we're walking along the edges of it but, if everyone does the same, we're going to start trampling the ground where the bluebells are.  Grizzly and I think we shouldn't go any further today, so back in the bag, please, little bears!'

We definitely didn't want to trample the bluebells, and we were getting chilly too, so we jumped back into our bag and Polar followed Grizzly back up the muddy path.

Once we were back on nice, crisp snow, Polar let us have another run.  Looking across the fields, we saw that some human cubs had built an igloo, like ours, and made a whole family of snow people.  We were very tempted to duck under the fence and run across for a closer look.

'What are those people doing?' asked Endon, climbing a post for a better view.

They were rolling a huge snowball across the field.

'We had better stay with Polar and Grizzly,' I said to the other bears.  'If those people lose control of that snowball, it could run us over and squish us!'

We decided to stay in the bag for the walk home.  We stopped at the allotment on the way back, but I will let Endon write one of his Garden Bears' World articles to tell you about that, because he had a nice surprise there.

Soon we were home, enjoying hot chocolate and Christmas cake, but looking forward to more walks with our humans in the North Staffordshire countryside.