Two Bears in Dorset - Fossil Hunting!

 This summer, Hanley Bear and I went on a super holiday with Polar, Grizzly, Grizzly's daughter and son-in-law and Grizzly's grandcubs, plus Florence, their doggie.

We all rented a pretty cottage together in Dorset.  On the way, we met two Small Bears from Shaftsbury in Dorset who said that there was a lot to enjoy in their home county.  Of course Hanley told them it could not possibly be as good as Staffordshire.

"But we have a coastline - with fossils!" said one of the Dorset Bears.  "And apple cake."

Hanley and I agreed that the apple cake was delicious, although Shaftsbury is better known to humans of a certain age for a certain type of loaf, that isn't actually made there!

 

The first day we were in Dorset was the elder grandcub's birthday.  He had presents to open, but his main present was joining a fossil-hunting walk along the beach at Charmouth.

 

We searched very carefully and found some tiny ammonites, but there were huge ones to see in the museum, which were bigger than us.  We found it hard to believe these had been sea creatures alive hundreds of millions of years ago. 

After Charmouth, we visited Lyme Regis for lunch, which I had to explain to Hanley was nothing to do with Newcastle-under-Lyme, the town next to Stoke-on-Trent.  He said the beer was very good, even if it wasn't brewed in Staffordshire.

Then we went for a walk and saw the statue of Mary Anning, who discovered lots of ancient creatures while excavating fossils in the 19th century, with the help of her dog, Tray.

Back at the cottage, we made a proper "Finds Table" of the coffee table, putting down lots of newspaper so we didn't scratch it and sorting our fossils into different types and sizes. 

It was tiring work for Small Bears!

Another day, we went to the Etches Museum, founded by Mr Steve Etches who still excavates fossils around Kimmeridge Bay and has a huge Pliosaur skull and hundreds of other amazing finds.

We bought a tiny envelope of small fossils each with our pocket money to add to our collection from Charmouth, and Polar collected some leaflets about the different types of rock to share with the local school.

Then we went fossil-hunting on the beach again.  Kimmeridge Bay was quite different to Charmouth, and you could see the outlines of several big ammonites in the flat rocks along the shore.

As well as looking for fossils, we were able to search for interesting living creatures in the rock pools, while Florence ran about on the flat rocks. 

"I hope she doesn't run too far," said Hanley.  "There might be bombs and bullets further up the beach!"

But both the human cubs and Florence were very sensible and didn't go past the warning sign, even though we couldn't see any red flags.

On the way home, we stopped at The Blue Pool, a lovely country park around a lake.  Hanley Bear was very excited when he found out that the lake is there because lots a clay was dug out of the ground here and sent to Wedgwood's factory in Stoke-on-Trent for making fine china.

Hanley and I climbed some of the pine trees and tried to find any small wild bears living in the woods but, if they were there, they were obviously very shy.

Back at the cottage, we opened our little packets of fossils to see what we had.  They were very small indeed, but ideal for a Small Bear collection, so we will look after them carefully.

We had other adventures in Dorset too, so I will try to write about those soon, as I have lots to tell you about our adventures this year that I haven't put on my blog yet!

Space Aliens in "Me" Park?

 Ay up, everyone!  It's Hanley Bear here, with a guest post for Sonning's blog about something strange that happened in Me Park during the summer.

"Me Park" being Hanley Park, of course, which is also the best park in the world, so I suppose that's why visitors from outer space came to have a look at it and landed their spacecraft there!

I was with the group of humans who have a regular Wednesday walk around Me Park when we spotted something very strange up in the top field.  I could see at once that it was definitely not from Earth and was probably an alien base of some sort, although the humans guarding it were doing a good job of persuading other passers-by that it was something to do with art.

A few days later, Polar and Grizzly took me back with them for a closer look.  By this time, a large crowd had gathered, and some of them were being allowed into the alien base!  One of the people pretending it was art gave us a map; it looked very easy to get lost inside, but I did my best to memorise it.

Polar and Grizzly had to take their shoes off to go inside but my small bear claws were small enough not to damage the strange fabric, so I was allowed in too.  I could see straight away that it was definitely not a human thing!

The people guarding it said all the light inside was natural but, although it was a dull day outside, the colours inside were glowing.  Definitely alien technology!  I told Grizzly I thought the aliens were probably friendly but not to get too close to any funny egg-shaped things we found on the floor, just in case.

I thought I spotted a small alien figure crawling along one of the passageways, but it turned out to be a human cub.  

 

I followed it anyway and found the most amazing chamber with a beautiful ceiling covered in patterns, which are probably alien writing.  I wondered if it explained the way to get to their home planet, or how to make homes like this for humans too.

We had plenty of time to carry on exploring but I couldn't find anywhere that looked like an engine room or control panel, just more colourful corridors and bouncy-walled small rooms.

I had hoped to meet the aliens and thank them for coming to visit Me Park, but we only saw their human helpers...

... unless the human helpers were the aliens, disguised as humans!

A Big Boating Adventure - Part Six

 

It’s always a little bit sad when you reach the end of a waterway and have to turn around to come back, so we Bears all had rather sad ears when it was time to leave Bishop’s Stortford and head home.  But we shouldn’t have been sad, as there were still plenty of great adventures ahead of us on our journey back to Kidsgrove.

On our way back down the Lee Navigation, we stopped at Waltham Abbey and our human guardians took us to explore the town, which we thought was very nice.  The last Saxon king of England, King Harold, is supposed to be buried there.  Polar liked the ancient abbey, Hanley Bear was delighted to find vintage Staffordshire china in the café where we had our lunch, and we all enjoyed some excellent cake.

    

Back in London, we ran into some very stormy weather.  It rained so hard that, when we got to Islington Tunnel and started travelling through it, we found that the water had got into the tunnel light’s electrical circuit and it hadn’t lit up!  Fortunately, Grizzly had a big torch so he could shine that out of the cratch, so any boats coming the other way could see there was already a boat in the tunnel.

We moored at the London Canal Museum again and, this time, we were able to visit.  We learnt all about how huge blocks of ice were brought in by boat from the arctic and stored there, as it had been belonged to an ice-cream company.  But the best thing about our visit was meeting our new Bear Buddy, Charlie.  He had been living in the museum for a little while, watching the trip boats and visitors like Uppie coming and going through the window, so when we asked if he would like to come boating with us, he was very keen.

  

We weren’t leaving London straight away as Polar had booked us a mooring in Paddington Basin for six nights.  She and Grizzly went home for a couple of days to check the house and garden, taking Hanley Bear with them for a little while at home, as he had been pining for Stoke-on-Trent.

     

That still left us several days for adventures in London.  Endon and I went to the Natural History Museum, I went with Polar and one of her friends to see an art exhibition at the Tate Gallery, while Hanley and Huddlesford had a super day out to Greenwich with our human guardians - and we met a big group of our Bear friends at Paddington Station.

  

We enjoyed our time in London but then it was time to go home.  Our human guardians had thought of going via the River Thames, but I remembered travelling down the tidal section to Brentford in 2017 and was glad when they decided to stick with the Grand Union.  Because we didn’t have a deadline to get home again, our humans decided we could take our time and visit some friends on the way, both human and bear, and explore some more places along the way, including Berkhamstead and Milton Keynes.  

    

We were almost back to Staffordshire when a very scary thing happened.  Towards the bottom of the locks through Atherstone, Grizzly fell in the canal!  Polar was filling a lock ready for Uppie to go in and Grizzly was steering.  He decided to pull in to the bank while he waited and to step off and hold the boat on a rope, but a gust of wind moved the boat back out just as he was stepping off.  Because we were in a short pound between locks, it was deeper than usual, so it was lucky that Grizzly was wearing his life jacket.  This inflated as soon as he hit the water; without it, he might have sunk or gone under the boat.  But, with his clothes full of water and unable to put his feet down to push himself up, Polar couldn’t get him out of the water on her own.

    

Fortunately, another boater from below the lock saw they were in trouble and helped get Grizzly ashore.  After a shower and change of clothes he was back on the tiller and ready to get through the lock to a safe place to moor overnight, but it had been a very close thing and we all gave Grizzly an extra hug before bedtime.

A couple of days later, we arrived back at Huddlesford Junction just in time to see The Flying Scotsman pass over the railway viaduct.  We guessed something interesting was happening because there were lots of people on the canal bridge, and several of them asked us to keep going so they could get our boat in their photo too!

We stopped at Shugborough on Polar’s birthday and celebrated with a cream tea in the café in the grounds and mini cakes for small bears back on the boat. 

 

From there, we were back on very familiar waters and, a few days later, we were home again.  We had enjoyed a marvellous adventure and brought home a new friend, but the best thing was knowing that our human guardian Grizzly was safe and sound.