A Visit to Parrot's Drumble

We have been very busy small bears having a lot of adventures recently, which means I have lots of posts to catch up on.  I am going to work backwards and tell you about the most recent ones first, starting with a visit to the lovely bluebell woods at Parrot's Drumble, which are close to where we live.

This was Huddlesford and Dudley's first visit, and we were looking forward to showing them how pretty it is there.  We explained that the nice people from the Wildlife Trusts help to look after it,although we suspect there may be a very secretive colony on wild small bears who help them.

  

The woods cover quite a large area, between the big shopping mall at Talke (which used to be called the Freeport but is now Affinity) and the A500 main road.  You get to them along a farm track, or through some boggy paths behind the industrial estate, or along a much nicer path from the farm where the Arbour Farm Shop is (although that can also get boggy when it has been rainy).

Polar carried us along the path to the woods in the Bear Bag, then let us all out to explore.  The bluebells were all in flower and looked glorious!  Huddlesford and Dudley thought it was a beautiful place. 

   

Polar and Grizzly trusted us to run about and explore on our own for a little while.  Endon found a little bear cave in the foot of a small beech tree, which we thought might be the home of very small wild bears, although we didn't see any.

During the winter storms, one of the biggest beech trees had been badly damaged and had needed to be cut down.  This made us all sad, although the Wildlife Trust have made a big pile of logs for creatures to live in and used the biggest branches to make seats.  When Grizzly sat down for a nap, we all came to sit next to him.

 

 Grizzly started counting the tree rings to try and work out how old the big beech tree had been.  He estimated there were over 150 rings, so it was quite an old tree.  Luckily, there are a lot of young beech trees growing in the woods, so hopefully, when we are very old bears, some of them will be great big trees like the one that has been cut down.

Then we went for another walk along a path and through the flowers.  When there are so many bluebells together, even humans can smell their perfume but, to small bears, it is very strong and pleasantly sweet, rather like a hyacinth.  We were careful not to step on the flowers or break their stems.

When we caught up with our human guardians, they were looking at a mosaic they had found.  I asked if it had been made by the Romans, because I know from watching programmes about human history that the Romans made lots of these, but Polar said she thought it was probably a community project the Wildlife Trust had sponsored.  It is still very nice.

  

Polar and Grizzly carried us home along the footpath that leads up through the fields to the farm where the farm shop is.  We were glad we were in the Bear Bag as there was a big buzzard soaring overheard.

There were sheep and lambs in the fields and quite a lot of their wool had caught in the hedges and on the fences.  Grizzly collected some of it to show the cubs.  I wonder if Polar can spin it to make one of them a scarf or even a little pullover?

 

We hope to visit some more bluebell woods while they are still in flower, as they are lovely places for small bears to play and explore.  We hope you are lucky enough to have one near you!