Paws around the Potteries - more New Year Walks

 

Ay up, everyone!  It's me, Hanley Bear again, with another one of my posts exploring where we live, in fantastic Staffordshire near the brilliant city of Stoke-on-Trent.

As the weather has been cold but bright, our human guardians have been taking us out for walks to some new places, but also to some old favourites.  Here are a couple of them.

All of us went to Knypersley Reservoir last week, which stores water for the Caldon Canal.  It was very full, because there had been wet weather over the weekend before our visit, so we could see water pouring over the overflow beside the dam.

The reservoir used to be in the grounds of a big stately home and there are still traces of the gardens and a folly, the Warder's Tower, where bats live.

There are also lots of different woodland birds, like great tits and nuthatches, and loads of squirrels, because the country park rangers and some visitors put seed and nuts out for them.

Sometimes we do a long walk right around the top "Serpentine" pool, but on this visit we walked across the middle dam, where there are great views across both lakes.

Polar let us all out of the Bear Bag to do a little bit of climbing, so we jumped about in this beech hedge along the dam, where we were high up out of the way of any doggies being taken for walkies.  The cubs, Waverley and Dudley, thought it was great fun.  Although he is a West Brom supporter, Dudley borrowed one of our Stoke City scarves to keep himself warm, as it was a chilly day.

When we had crossed the dam, we found a tree that was safe for the cubs to climb too and they had loads of fun. 

Finally, we all did some more climbing on the old pumping equipment beside the lake and sat on the top so Polar could take this picture.  I think it might be on our calendar next year!

 

Another day, Polar and Grizzly went for a walk along the Salt Line.  Cheshire East council say it is in their county, but the line used to go to Trentham Gardens in Staffordshire, so I claim it for Stoke!

 

Polar and Grizzly just wanted a quick, brisk walk as it was a very cold day, but Huddlesford and I persuaded them to take us, because there are posts marking out the distances, to scale, between the planets in our Solar System and I love anything to do with space, and Huddlesford loves anything to do with railways.

 

Here's Huddlesford and I, climbing the fence by the golf club where the marker for the sun is fixed, then you can see Grizzly and I at the first post which is very close to it, representing the small, rocky planet Mercury. 

 

Huddlesford and I took it in turns to climb the next three posts which were for Venus, Earth and Mars, which were all less than 200 metres from the sun. 

 

After that, the path goes under the M6 motorway.  I told Huddlesford we ought to think of the cars and lorries on the road above us as the asteroids in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

 

It was a lot further to the Jupiter post than it had been from the Sun to Mars.  After we got to the Jupiter post, which it was my turn to climb, we did some tree climbing, because we are small bears and that's what small bears do!

Then I showed Huddlesford the old railway sleeper with the plaque on it that explains where the Salt Line used to run and why it was built.  It's hard to believe that there was a busy salt and chemical industry near here and that it would have been very dirty and smelly, as it is all nice countryside now.

We had even further to walk to find the Saturn post, so we got a lift in the Bear Bag.  Huddlesford was amazed when I told him that the "ice giant" planets, Uranus and Neptune, were still a very long walk away.  Grizzly said we would have to see them another day, as it was time for lunch, so we turned back soon after crossing the lane.  There are moorings on the canal quite close by, so maybe we'll visit by boat one day?

We are lucky bears to have so many good walks to enjoy.  I wonder where we will go next?