Small Bears like "As You Like It"

 

Hello everyone!  It's wee Waverley here, smallest member of Sonning's hug, and I'm going to tell you all about a trip to the New Vic Theatre in Newcastle-under-Lyme that Dudley and I had with Polar and Grizzly last week.

The New Vic is a "theatre in the round", so the stage is right in the middle, with seats all around it.  A company called Northern Broadsides were performing a play called "As You Like It" by Mr William Shakespeare.  Polar and Grizzly have often seen them at the New Vic and told us bears they were very good.

Once we were sure Grizzly was clear of the nasty virus, Polar said it was probably the safest time to take him out and about, as he would have the protection of both his vaccinations and from his own anti-bodies, so she bought tickets for them both.  

Then said she could probably smuggle in a bear or two, if we could hide in the big pockets of her best coat!  We thought one of the older bears would want to go, but Sonning suggested we cubs would be best as pocket bears.  

"And don't worry about following the plot or understanding Shakespeare's language," said Sonning.  "The human cubs at the school down the road do Shakespeare and have had the Royal Shakespeare Company come to teach them, even though some of them are only infants!" 

So we hid in Polar's pocket with her purse and phone until we were inside the theatre.  We sat on the seat next to Grizzly to start with, but found we had a better view of the stage if we got back into the pocket and Polar hung her coat on the safety rail in front of her.

Then the play began, and it was so exciting!  There were really colourful costumes, and fights, and people being exiled and going to live in the forest as outlaws, and comical characters, and people pretending to be sheep crawling about with slippers on their hands, but most confusing of all there was a character called Rosalind who was sometimes a girl and sometimes a boy - and sometimes a girl pretending to be a boy, pretending to be a girl!

Grizzly bought us a little tub of ice-cream in the interval, which was very tasty, so we ate some of that and got Polar to explain again who everybody was, whether they were goodies or baddies, and who was in love with who, but then in the second half some people who had been baddies became goodies after all, so we got confused again, but it was still fun.

Polar said she wasn't supposed to take photographs, but she managed a quick one with her phone before the play started again.  You can see that they have used these old hat-stands to represent the trees in the forest, and lots of costumes on washing lines to represent the canopy of the trees, as so much of the story is about disguises and dressing up.

At the end of the play nobody got killed and everyone was happy, so we small bear cubs cheered and danced about, and hugged Polar and Grizzly, and thanked them for bringing us to see the show.  

We were so sleepy after all the excitement that we fell asleep in Polar's pocket on the way home, and when we got back and tried to explain the story to the other bears, we muddled up who everyone was again and now we are all confused!

Hanley Bear goes to London

 Ay up, everyone!  It's Hanley Bear here, to tell you about a journey I made with Grizzly a couple of weeks ago.  I was a really lucky bear as I was the only bear to go with him - and we went all the way to London on the train!

Grizzly was going to see one of his friends - a man called Nick who he used to work with when he was with Network Rail - and then meet his son, George.  We travelled on off-peak trains because we thought they would be quiet, so there would be less chance of Grizzly catching the nasty virus - but we didn't realise he had probably caught it already by then!

We caught our train at Kidsgrove station, after Polar dropped us off, walking over the new footbridge which Grizzly spent years and years campaigning for (the lifts have not been finished yet), then had to change trains at Stafford.  

We arrived in London at a big station called Euston, where Grizzly didn't take any photos, and Grizzly walked along a nice quiet route away from the main road to St Pancras Station.  I remembered coming here with Sonning when we went to Belgium in 2018.  

It is a really cool station! 

Grizzly, me and Mr Nick had lunch there, then they took me across the road to Kings Cross Station, to see Platform 9 3/4s, where the Hogwarts Express leaves from.

"Can we go back to Stoke on the Hogwarts Express?" I asked Grizzly, but he said he was only a 'muggle', so we couldn't.  

"Maybe we could if I had an owl?" I thought, so I slipped out of Grizzly's pocket while he was talking to Mr Nick, found a very small owl in the shop and bought him.  But even with my owl, I couldn't get through the wall, and hurt my shoulder charging at it.  

Grizzly picked me and my owl up and put us in his pocket.

"Never mind, Hanley," he said.  "It's quite a nice day.  Let's go for a walk and see if we can find the Regents Canal - it's not far from here."  

So we set off past some posh flats and suddenly, there was the canal!  I wonder if we'll even get here on Uppie?

Then it was time to say goodbye to Mr Nick and to find Mr George.  He and Grizzly met back at Euston, then we went to a great pub and had a big dinner with chips, and some beer, then got the trains back to Stafford and Kidsgrove, where Polar came to meet us.  What a brilliant day we'd had!  

I still need to think of a name for my owl pal, though.  I might call him Shaqiri!

Garden Bears' World - Snowdrops at Rode Hall

 Hello everyone!  I think what we need to cheer us all up during this stormy weather is a Garden Bears World visit to a very special garden near where we live.

Just before poor Grizzly got the nasty virus, we had a super day out.  As Huddlesford and Hanley had been enjoying adventures, Polar and Grizzly suggested that Sonning and I, and the two cubs, might like an afternoon out at Rode Hall Gardens in Cheshire, famous for its carpet of snowdrops.

The house is an elegant old mansion and still belongs to the Wilbraham family, who have lived on the site since the 1620s, although the current Hall is a little bit younger than that!

As well as snowdrops, there are other lovely winter flowers here.  The first one I noticed was a lovely scenty shrub called Daphne. We have a small one in the garden at home but there are several large ones on the path that leads down to the hall from the car park and the scent is amazing, especially if you have a bear nose!

There are clumps of snowdrops under the Daphnes and the little cubs insisted on being allowed out of the Bear Bag for a closer look.  They could see there were different varieties, as some were taller, others had broader petals and some had more green markings on the petals.  Even in our garden, we have two (identified as "taller" and "shorter") but there were more than that here and there are supposed to be around two and a half thousand different cultivars in the UK!

Rode Hall also has spring-flowering cyclamen in its gardens - these pretty little Cyclamen coum.  Like the autumn-flowering Cyclamen hederifolium they like growing under trees and they look very similar, although their leaves are slightly rounder.

We started exploring the woodland walk next, and found there were plenty of climbing logs with moss on where we could practice our wild bear skills.

It was while we were sitting on one of the logs, near the end of the woodland walk, that we spotted the biggest drift of snowdrops we had ever seen.  There must have been hundreds of thousands of them!

We skipped down the path and went to explore, running around among them but being very careful not to trample any under our paws.  It was amazing to think that such dainty little flowers are in bloom when the weather is usually cold and even icy.  They really did look like a carpet of snow.

When we had spent enough time exploring and sniffing the snowdrops (which do have a nice smell, although it is not always strong enough for humans to notice), Sonning climbed up onto a bench to wave to Polar and Grizzly, so we could get a lift in the Bear Bag down to the next part of the garden.

Beyond this lovely waterfall is a path that leads down to the lake, where there is an old boathouse.  We wondered if we would spot any interesting birds but just saw some Canada geese on this visit, although Grizzly thought he could see a grebe in the distance.

Polar let us do a little more climbing on the trees here, while it was quiet, then we made our way back to the main gardens, finding a different path that led into a rocky glen.

I had a fine time of it here, practicing my free-climbing ready for future Mountaineering Bears adventures, and spotting a fabulous "corkscrew hazel" shrub (Corylus avellana 'Contorta').

This path took us to a little sad garden, for family pets who had passed over the Rainbow Bridge, so we all put our paws together for them before moving on to the formal gardens in front of the house.

The rose gardens were very bare but on the steps leading to the house we saw some lovely miniature irises.  Polar has grown some in pots this year and I am going to try and find good places we can plant them out in the garden to flower in future years, where they won't get too wet.

There were some very nice Hellebore plants too - although I think ours are even nicer!

The way out was through the Kitchen Garden, which I thought was marvelous, even though there are not many vegetables growing in it at this time of year.  The gardener has a nice cottage to live in and had a good chat with Polar and Grizzly about carrot root fly and allium leaf miner and other pests, which he also has problems with.

There are big greenhouses and also a nice, big potting shed, and a rhubarb patch with proper pottery rhubarb forcers.  I climbed on one of them but couldn't get the lid off to look inside, which was probably just as well as they are for keeping the light out to grow very tender, early rhubarb.

The last place we visited was the Italian Garden, which is planted inside the shell of an old part of the Hall that used to be used for big get-togethers for all the estate staff, when there were dozens and dozens of them before the First World War.  Now it makes a lovely shady courtyard in the summer and a sheltered spot on a windy wintry day.

I hope Polar and Grizzly will bring us back again, when there are more daffodils and crocus in flower, or to see the roses and the cut-flower beds in the kitchen garden in the summer.

And I hope to be back with more Garden Bears World adventures soon.