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!