From the Sun to Saturn! Our return to the Salt Line

Ay up, everyone!  It's Hanley Bear here, with a post about posts - and science, too.

You might remember that, before Christmas, Polar and Grizzly took us for a walk along a disused railway route called The Salt Line, that used to run from Wheelock near Sandbach to Kidsgrove.  As we made our way back to the car, we'd noticed two posts with the names of planets on - the Ice Giants, Uranus and Neptune.

     

Ever since finding these, and working out that they must have been part of a Solar System trail, I've wanted to go back and find the others.  

Finally, last weekend, Polar and Grizzly went back to the Salt Line again.  This time, we left the car at the other end of the path and I soon spotted where the trail of planets began.

The Sun was attached to the fence at the far end of the car park, where the railway line would have carried on but the path stopped, because the land on the other side is all part of a golf course.

The three planets closest to the Sun - Mercury, Venus and our Earth, were all in the car park area.  I told the other bears some strange facts about Mercury, including that it spins so slowly that a 'day' lasts 59 of our Earth days, but is so close to the sun that a year lasts just 88 days.

'Venus is funny too,' I told them.  'It spins in the opposite direction to most of the other planets, but so slowly that a Venus day lasts over 240 Earth days.  In fact, a Venus day lasts longer than a Venus year!'  

I told them that both Mercury and Venus were very, very hot - far too hot for bears - and that Mercury didn't even have a proper atmosphere.  'Although Venus does, it's full of acid!' I added.

The other bears thought this was all very strange and didn't sound very nice at all.

Polar and Grizzly carried us all across the road to where the path ran beside the crossing-keeper's cottage.  It was only a little way along the trail before we found the post for Mars, near where a little robin was singing.

'Isn't there a mission to Mars at the moment?' asked Endon.

'That's right - Perseverance is exploring it right now, looking for evidence of microscopic life,' I said.  'But it's too cold there for bears and there isn't enough oxygen in the atmosphere for us, so we'll have to stay on Earth and encourage humans to look after it better.'

We had reached a very pretty area of woods with a stream running through a little valley and the first few leaves of bluebells just starting to show through the leaf litter.  It was strange thinking than none of the other planets had anywhere as nice as this on them.

We had to be carried quite a long way further on to get to the Jupiter post.  The other bears all knew that Jupiter was the biggest planet and that it was a Gas Giant, but they didn't know that a Jupiter day is lasts less than half an Earth day and that the huge planet has almost 80 moons.

While we were doing some climbing, I tried to imagine how fast Jupiter's upper atmosphere must be moving if such a huge planet rotated twice as fast as the Earth but it made my head feel giddy, so I stopped thinking about space things for a little while and just played like a bear.

We had another fairly long journey in the Bear Bag before we got to Saturn, another Gas Giant planet famous for its rings.  Not long after I joined Sonning's hug, the Cassini mission ended and I got leaky eyes thinking about the little space craft that had made such an incredible journey and taken such amazing pictures burning up in Saturn's atmosphere, and I got slightly leaky eyes again, thinking of it on our walk.

I wanted to go all the way to see the posts for Uranus and Neptune again, but Polar said we didn't have time as we needed to go home for lunch.  She and Grizzly carried us back along a different path, beside the stream and up through some fields, rejoining the Solar Trail between Jupiter and Mars, near the M6 motorway.

'It's funny how the motorway is roughly where the asteroid belt would be!' I said to the other bears.  'I wonder if they thought of that when they were planning the trail?'

Even though the big planets look pretty, with their swirling clouds and rings, they would be impossible to live on and very dark too, as they are such a long way from the sun.  Us bears all agreed that we were lucky bears to have such a lovely, habitable planet.

We hope all our human friends will help us to take care of it.

Garden Bears' World - Brightening up the Front Garden

Last month, I helped Polar to redesign the bottom flowerbed in the front garden, which is closest to the living room window.  We wanted to make sure there were some pretty flowers and interesting foliage to see all year round in what can be quite a bare bed at the moment.

Polar had made a start by moving two big plants that weren't happy there - a big fern that needed more space and a peony that needs more sunshine - so there were two big holes ready for us to plant into.

Before we started planting, we placed the new plants in their pots where we thought they would look nice, and shuffled them around until we were happy with how they looked.

We planted the three pale-leaved bergenia plants in a cluster close to the edge of the bed, in the big hole where the dull fern had been.  Then we planted the dark-leaved bergenia where the peony had been, on the other side of the bed where it would get a little more light.

The little skimmia shrub went in the middle of the bed.  It is very small now and won't grow very quickly, but it has such nice glossy foliage and frothy flower spikes I think it will look super.

We planted a group of three evergreen ferns on the left-side of the bed where there are already some clumps of snowdrops, a bright lime-green heuchera and a pretty bi-coloured hellebore.

Finally, Polar lifted some more snowdrops from crowded clumps in the back garden and brought them round to the front, to place in between our new plants.

The snowdrops have almost finished flowering now but our other plants are all settling in well.  While they are quite small, Polar and I might cheat and push some dogwood stems into the ground between them for some extra colour and height.  There are some growing on the roundabout at the southern end of the village, so she's planning to pay a visit with her secateurs very soon!

 

A Walk by the Canal

We bears haven't been able to enjoy any boat journeys for ages but at least we live close enough to the canals to go for towpath walks when the weather is nice enough.  

One sunny morning, Polar and Grizzly took us down to the aqueduct where the Macclesfield Canal crosses over the Trent and Mersey Canal.  There is a circular walk from there that takes you up to Hardingswood Junction in Kidsgrove along one canal and back along the other.

You can see that the water is quite orangey, because there are iron deposits in the hill that the Harecastle Tunnels burrow through nearby.  In fact, when there are more boats on the move, stirring up the sediment, the water is even more orange!

We started our walk near Mr Tony's yard, where Uppie has been for little repairs from time to time.  There was a boat out of the water for hull-blacking, so we could show Waverley what the under-water parts of a narrowboat look like.

After crossing the bridge across the 'Macc', we were carried down to the Trent and Mersey canal and the locks.  There, Polar let us out of our Bear Bag and we climbed up onto the balance beam to explain how locks worked to little Waverley.  We found we had a very good view of the aqueduct.

Sometimes there is a kingfisher here, because the pool below the lock must be good for catching fish, but we didn't see it today.

We had a serious talk with Waverley about staying safe near the water too, as there are culverts and by-washes near locks, with strong currents, that are very dangerous for small bears and little human cubs.  

There is also a sad little memorial beside ths lock to a young man who fell into it and was drowned, so even grown-up humans should be very careful near them.  We all had leaky eyes looking at the little garden his friends and family have made to remember him.

Polar gave us all hugs before she lifted us back into the Bear Bag to carry us up to the next lock, which is the last of the Cheshire Locks at the top of 'Heartbreak Hill' - the thirty-one locks coming up from Middlewich.  When we have been away on journeys on Uppie, we are always sad to get here, because it means our adventure is nearly over, but Polar and Grizzly are pleased because it means they have finally done all the locks! 

Like lots of the Cheshire Locks, there are two beside each other here, because the Trent and Mersey was once such a busy canal that there would have been long queues if only one was in use.  There were no boats on the move today, so it was very quiet. 

'Can we go up to the wharf and see Uppie?' I asked Grizzly, as we reached the junction, where we would otherwise have turned back towards Mr Tony's yard.

'Of course we can,' he said.  'We can go right up to the tunnels if you like.'

Once we reached the railway bridge, we could see the line of boats along Uppie's wharf.  It would have been a lovely day to go boating too, with light winds and sunshine, and I almost got leaky eyes again when we saw our boat.

'We'll come down for a visit one day,' said Polar.  'Then we can check the engine and have a tidy-up on board, bring the duvet and pillows back aboard and get ready for when we are allowed to go cruising again.'

 

That made us all feel much more cheerful, and we chattered away to Waverley about what Uppie was like inside, until we were nearly at the tunnels.

We were carried under another railway bridge and found ourselves in a cutting with towpaths on both sides and a moored boat waiting near the tunnel that's still in use.

Hanley Bear told Waverley that the bigger tunnel had been designed by Mr Thomas Telford, a very famous engineer who also designed the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct.  It had been needed because the older tunnel, designed by Mr James Brindley, was so narrow boats could not pass in it, and that was causing long delays on this busy canal.

'Some people think the new tunnel was built because the old one was broken,' said Hanley.  'In fact, they used both for nearly ninety years, with one taking north-bound boats and the other boats going south.'

 

But, eventually, the old tunnel had become unsafe and now all boats have to use the Telford Tunnel, with tunnel keepers organising things so boats going in different directions don't meet in the middle.

From the towpath, we could see the rescue boat, which lives just inside the tunnel when it is closed.  The towpath was looking very smart, because volunteers had been cleaning the cobbles and cutting back overgrown vegetation, and there was even a little wildflower patch by the tunnel-keepers' office.

Little Waverley said he was very excited about being a Boat Bear and was looking forward to going on the boat.

 

'I would like to go on a train too,' he said, watching one passing over the bridge.  'I came down from Scotland by train, but I was in a mailbag and couldn't see out!'

We bears decided it would be a marvellous adventure to go to Scotland on the train with our human guardians, when it is safe, especially if we could see Waverley's paddle steamer, so we will talk to Polar and see if she can organise it for us.

Then it was time to head back to the car.  We followed the Macclesfield Canal this time, passing more moored boats including one with some cartoon people on the side.

 

'May un Mar Lady was a cartoon strip in the local paper, before I was even a cub,' Hanley explained. 'It means Me and my Wife in Stoke dialect.  They were always arguing with each other, but Mar Lady usually won.'

A little further on, we reached the bridge where we had started our walk and Mr Tony's boatyard, and we were almost back at the car when it started to pour with rain.  Polar quickly tucked us inside the Bear Bag and zipped it up.

 

On our way home, the sun came out again and Polar photographed a rainbow, which made us all feel cheerful - but having scones and rice pudding for tea made us even happier!