London Canals and a Visit to Paddington

 After we returned from France, Hanley, Endon and I had an extra day's holiday exploring London with Polar and Grizzly.

After Polar and Grizzly had carried their luggage (and us) up to their hotel room and made a cup of tea, Grizzly suggested we all have a look at the new developments near King's Cross station.  Hanley Bear, who had seen some of it when he visited London with Grizzly earlier in the year, said that was a great idea. 

We found the Regent's Canal ran right under the tracks leading out of St Pancras and, if you followed it past some blocks of flats built inside the framework of old gas holders, there was a busy square with lots of bars and restaurants.

Further on was another square, with dozens of little fountains that kept changing and lighting up.  Because it was a very warm evening, human cubs were playing in these and laughing, which made us very happy as we love to see them having fun.

The following morning, after a very good night's sleep, Polar and Grizzly checked their luggage in at St Pancras (where we were going to catch our train home), and we all went exploring again.

We made our way past King's Cross station and back to the canal, because we were going to visit the London Canal Museum.

Polar took some more pictures of the apartments in the gas holders and of the parks and planting around them, which she and Endon Bear thought was very well-designed.

The Canal Museum is quite hidden away, east of King's Cross station, but we managed to find it.  There is a canal basin with some live-aboard boats at the back of the museum and picnic tables where we could sit and look at the boats, but there isn't a cafe or any cake.

There are teams of small bears who help very kind human volunteers to look after the museum.  The museum building is interesting and quite strange, as it used to be the base of a Victorian ice-cream business and had a huge cellar where ice was stored after being brought all the way from the Arctic by boat.

We were sad that there wasn't still an ice-cream factory in the museum but there were plenty of other interesting things to see, including some very pretty watering cans.  You can see how there are many different styles of canal roses - Polar's are different again!

While we were at the museum, a trip boat arrived to take some visitors on a journey along the canal.  We noticed that there were overnight moorings for visitors there, if you booked in advance.

"Wouldn't it be fun to come here on Uppie one day?" I said to the other bears, and they both agreed it would be.

Back inside the museum, Hanley found some classic boat engines to examine, and I admired some lovely little models of traditional Thames boats of various types.

Then we all jumped aboard this funny little tractor-type vehicle, which we nick-named the Bear Mobile.  We had so much fun playing on it, that we forgot to read the notice that would have told us what it was for!

We thought the canal museum was lovely and we promised to tell all our friends about it as it does not always get very many visitors and needs extra volunteers to help the small bears look after it.

Then it was time for another adventure, as Grizzly was taking us for a trip of the new Elizabeth Line across London.  First, we had to catch a Thameslink train from King's Cross to Farringdon, where we could connect with the new railway.

A long escalator took us down to the platform, deep underground (although Polar says the Northern Line at Angel has even longer escalators that she finds quite scary).

There we safety doors that made sure we couldn't go onto the platform until the train arrived and when it did, we saw where we were going - to Paddington!

"Will we see Paddington himself?" I asked Polar.

"Probably not," she said.  "But you will be able to see where he first met Mr and Mrs Brown, on platform 1, and there is a nice little statue of him near one of the entrances.

We were very excited about seeing where Paddington was found but first, we had more exploring to do at the new underground station, where Polar took our pictures climbing on one of the name boards.

From the Elizabeth Line station, it is a very short walk across a little road to the overground station and right onto the famous platform 1 - and there was the plaque commemorating Paddington's arrival.  We all cheered very loudly, then had a quite moment thinking about how lucky we had been when we were found by our human guardians.

"Where's the statue?" Hanley Bear asked.  "I thought it would be near here."

"It used to be," said Polar, but we all had to go right across the station to find it.  The statue Paddington was wearing his hat and "Please look after this bear" label and had a little suitcase for his marmalade sandwiches, so we sat on that to have our photo taken by Polar, then she got a passer-by to take a picture of all of us together.

Grizzly and Polar were meeting a waterways friend at lunchtime, whose boat was moored in Paddington Basin.  Mr Steve showed us where there was another Paddington statue, under a bridge near the canal, and that there is a whole trail of them you can follow.

"Can we do that after lunch?" asked Endon.  Unfortunately, lunch took a very, very long time to be served, so we didn't have time to look for any more Paddingtons before we had to set off back to St Pancras.

"We will have to bring Uppie down and spend some time here, then we can find all the Paddingtons," said Polar.  "Grizzly and I came to the Cavalcade Festival back in 2013.  Perhaps we should try to do it again next year, ten years on?"

We think that would be a marvellous plan!

Small Bears "en Vacances" Part 8: Going Home

I often say that we are very lucky small bears and, if you have been reading about our holiday, I'm sure you will agree.  We had all enjoyed a marvellous cruise, but now it was almost at an end.

On our last afternoon, after Endon got back from his trip to the lavender farm, we bears decided to explore the boat properly.  We had seen a plan of it and knew that there was a little club room at the stern, with jigsaw puzzles and board games, so we decided to start there. 

We thought it would be busy, but it seemed that most of humans were in their cabins packing, or up in the bar.  Because it was wet, they couldn't go up on the deck and nor could we.  

We found there were tea and coffee making things for everyone but Hanley did a hard stare when he saw the cups weren't from Stoke-on-Trent.

After playing in there for a little while, we found a flight of stairs to the next deck up and here, to our great surprise, we found a nice gym - and it was empty!

"After all the food they've eaten, I would have thought it would be very busy with humans trying to get fit and lose weight," I said.

We decided we should set them an example.  Hanley spent a few minutes bouncing on a big ball, but the fitness machines were all too big for small bears, so we decided to carry on exploring.

Scurrying along the corridor from the gym, we found ourselves at the top of the main stairs.  There were some seats here, with cushions which were very soft and springy, so we did lots more bouncing.  We could smell cake somewhere nearby, so decided to wait here.

Meanwhile, I found a big book full of nice things people had written about their stay on board.  We decided we bears ought to write nice things too, but we didn't have a pen with us, so we wrote something later and got Polar to slip it into the book.

The mystery of the cake smell was solved when we heard an announcement that afternoon tea was going to be served in the lounge, which was right in front of us!  So we ran on in, ahead of all the humans, and there we found the most delicious selection of cakes we had ever seen!

After enjoying a delicious tea, with Polar and Grizzly, we listened to Mr Lazlo playing the piano.  Then we found our cabin steward, Mr Mitko, so we could thank him for making our cabin tidy, leaving us little chocolates every evening and bringing our flannel friends.  

There were lots of other people to thank as well, including Mrs Andrea, the cruise manager, and Mrs Judith, our travel company lady.  And we got to see all of the crew except the chefs, who were busy making dinner.  We cheered for them all, especially the chefs, who we hoped could hear us down in the kitchen!

While our human guardians were having dinner, we remembered we ought to bring back some presents for the other bears.  We decided we would be very good and not eat our evening chocolates, so we could bring them home.

"That's only three presents, and there are nine other bears," said Endon.  "I wish we had thought to get edible treats for everyone sooner."

Of course Endon had bought us our honey soap, but not all the bears like being bathed and some aren't bath-able at all.

But Hanley Bear had a plan.  He got up very early on our last morning and, while the humans were all busy sorting out their luggage, he went into the restaurant.

His first plan was to gather up some breakfast rolls and pastries, and he had a nibble of some of them to see if they would do, but then he remembered we were going to have an extra day in London before we got home.

"Bread and pastries will get stale by then," he thought.  "there must be something else!"

Then he found that there was a honey, jam and marmalade dispenser on the breakfast counter, so he hide some jars under the table and smuggled them into the Bear Bag while Polar wasn't looking.

Soon it was time to say goodbye to our lovely ship and leave for the station.  We stayed with Grizzly while Polar went exploring, taking pictures of the amazing double-decker trains, which are used for local journeys and for high-speed trips.  

 

We were all very excited about going on the TGV again, although we knew we had a long day of travelling ahead of us.  

 

"You bears must have eaten lots of cakes yesterday afternoon," said Polar, as she carried our bag on board the train.  "You feel quite a lot heavier than usual!"

Hanley kept quiet about his stash of honey and marmalade!

 

The TGV wasn't too busy, so we were able to do some more exploring.  Hanley discovered there was a little mirror on the back of the seats - at first, he thought he had found a small French bear to talk to!

I have included some of Polar's pictures of trains, because I know lots of our friends like trains.  The ones above were taken when we reached Gard du Lyon in Paris, where we thought we had lost one of our party for a few minutes, but luckily he was found before the coach had to leave for Gard du Nord.

 

The pictures below are at Gard du Nord.  We had a very good journey home from there, but were very sleepy bears so had naps for most of it!

Polar had booked us a hotel near the station again, but it was a different one to where we had stayed going out and the reception person wasn't very helpful.  He left Polar and Grizzly to carry their bags up two flights of stairs to their (very small) room on their own.  

 

We all gave him very hard stares but at least the room was clean.  Polar said she thought it was the sort of place MI5 might hide a defecting spy!

"There might not be spies in this room, but there is a smuggler!" she added, when she was helping us all out of the Bear Bag and found the little jars from breakfast.  "Which of you bears did this?"

 

Hanley owned up and explained they were presents for the other bears.  "We've had such a brilliant holiday, we thought we ought to bring presents for them all," he said.  

 

Polar gave him hugs for telling the truth and caring about his friends. "That's the sort of thing Paddington would do," she said.  "And tomorrow, you're coming with us to see his statue."

 

We all cheered when she told us that, and that wasn't our only adventure in London!