A Walk around Silverdale

Polar and Grizzly have less work to do in the garden and on the allotment now autumn is here, so they try to get exercise by going for walks - with us bears, of course!

This autumn, they are exploring some of the parks and country parks in our area, including some they haven't been to before.  Last week, we all went to Silverdale Country Park in Newcastle-under-Lyme borough.  On the way, Polar showed us a bus-stop in the village of Scott Hay that had been yarn bombed.

Silverdale Country Park used to be a huge mine and didn't close until the late 1990s.  Although it provided the local humans with lots of jobs, it messed the countryside up very badly and until very recently there was still an underground fire burning in one of the abandoned coal seams!

But now it is a big area of wild countryside, planted to encourage rare birds to nest and fenced to keep people and dogs away from some areas so the birds can thrive.  When we visited, a bird-watching man with a telescope pointed out a flock of meadow pippits and told us to look out for stonechats (Polar saw one) and we saw a flock of linnets and a big flock of lapwings.

 

Polar let us have a run in a big field near the car park and Endon found a toadstool and a big mossy rock.  In places, the ground was very soft and quite boggy, although other areas were very dry with very dark, gritty soil, because they were made up of spoil from the coal mines.

Most of the birds on the lake were mallards, coots and seagulls, but there was a great-crested grebe too - we love to see them.  We expect there are different ducks and geese during the winter, so we'll see if we go again.

On this visit, we didn't walk all round the lake, but went along one side, then up through the meadows to the ridge at the top for a good view of the whole lake.

 

There is also a small pond on the site, but that's fenced off as it's just for the fishing club.

 

From the top of the old spoil heap, which is now planted with meadow grasses, shrubs and trees, you can see all the way to Hanley (the town, not the bear!) and to the centre of Newcastle-under-Lyme.

You can see one of the new buildings at Keele University too, and the church tower in the centre of Silverdale village.  We bears sat up on Polar's shoulders for the best view and tried to see how many places we could recognise.

Polar let us have a run along a path that leads down from the miner's statue towards the lake, so we could sniff the grasses and see what plants we could find.  We saw someone riding a horse along the trail at the top of the hill.

'I wonder if Polar will ever go horse-riding again?' said Endon.

'If she does, maybe we could go too?' said Hanley.

I thought that might be rather dangerous for small bears, so I didn't say anything!

We found a big warm stone to sit on while we waited for Polar and Grizzly to catch us up, and listened to all the birds tweeting.  It was hard to imagine that this used to be all noisy, dirty and industrial!

Before she lifted us back into the bear bag for the long walk back to the car, Polar took our photograph.

'I hope you enjoyed that, little bears,' she said.

'We did!' I told her.  'There was something for all of us to enjoy.  Plants for Endon, wild birds for me and lots of industrial history for Hanley Bear.'

'We'll come here again soon,' said Grizzly.  'But we'll visit some other parks and country parks first.  And now, it must be time for tea!'

 

We had done lots of running, so we had naps in the car on the way home, after we had looked for the yarn-bombed bus-stop!
 

Garden Bears' World - Bringing in the Harvest.

Hello everyone!  It's time for a look at what's happening on the allotment, in another episode of Garden Bears' World.

The squashes and pumpkins have stopped growing now and have had time to ripen.  Before the nights get frosty, it's time to bring them indoors.  As you can see, even the smaller orange Potimarron ones are too big for me to carry, and the Queensland Blue are a good size too.

Polar decided the skins would benefit from more time to dry out before they go into our shed, so she's put them in the little greenhouse on the allotment for now. 

 
The autumn-fruiting raspberries haven't liked this soggy autumn very much and have almost finished now, but we still managed to get some good pickings of fruit from them.  We are still getting a few eating beans from Chomper's runners too, although most of the beans left are being kept for seed.  There are quite a lot, so we can share them with our friends.

Here's our wild flower patch, looking very lush.  We hope the bees will like all the flowers next year.  Polar says there are daffodil bulbs underneath, so we hope to have some to bring home as well as plenty for the bees.

One of the best crops this year was from our courgettes.  These were coming home to go in a curry!  As the nights get cooler, the courgettes stop growing, although there are still some small ones that might develop.

 The nets did their job and kept the butterflies off our cabbages and other brassicas, so we have lots of greens for the winter.  We are looking forward to eating these with mash and veggie sausages!

And we've got sweetcorn too!  Polar hasn't grown any for a few years as it hasn't done very well in the past, but this year it seems to have flourished.  Polar says you can grow it in the same bed as pumpkins, so perhaps we'll grow more next year?

 

Back in the garden, it's been pear-picking time.  Some of them have been pecked by the birds, then wasps get in and start eating them.

So I had to be very careful when I helped Polar pick them.  Most of the pears grow where she can reach them but there are some that are just too high up, and having the help of a small bear saves her having to fetch a ladder (and ask Grizzly to hold it).

Once we had picked the pears, it was time to get the Bramley Apples.  We bears love these, because they are cooking apples and make delicious flans, pies and cakes.

'This one is almost as big as my head!' said Sonning.

We had two boxes of undamaged ones to put in the outhouse, where they should keep for several months, while any that were bruised or pecked went in another tray to use up soon.

We helped Polar put the pears where they would be able to finish ripening, but where we could watch them to make sure they didn't go all brown and mushy.  

And then, it was time for tea and cake!

Three Bears and Four Counties. Part Five - Curry and Oatcakes!

'We're almost home, little bears,' Polar said on Saturday morning.  'We'll be in Stoke this morning.'

We started to feel slightly sad, because our boat adventure was nearly over, but then she added, 'I'm going to treat us to a nice curry for lunch from Shug's stall in the market.' 

We all cheered.  Mrs Shug's curries from her Tiffin and Chai stall are so good that they have won awards - lucky Hanley Bear used to have curry on his way to football with Grizzly sometimes.

So after breakfast we were on our way, past the big Wedgwood factory and heading for Trentham Lock.

We sat in the cratch while Polar and Grizzly steered the boat.  Although it was a bright day, there was a cold wind so we couldn't sit on the roof.

We moored close to the Civic Offices in Stoke, well before the big lock by the station, where there are a couple of odd mooring rings beside the towpath.  Polar took her mask and went to get the curry and we helped Grizzly set the table.  Then we all tucked in to chicken biryani and dhal, naan bread and our favourite veggie samosas, followed by some luxurious chocolate brownies. 

That gave Polar and Grizzly the energy they needed to work Uppie through the five locks up to Etruria, where they filled the water tank and disposed of our rubbish.  Then Polar turned Uppie around and we carried on up the Trent and Mersey Canal towards Westport Lake.

On the way, we stopped at Longport boatyard to get the toilet pumped out (poo!) and Grizzly bought a new fender for the stern, because the old one had got very squished and wasn't doing a very good job of protecting the rudder.

We wondered where we were going to stop overnight.  'I think it'll be Westport Lake,' I said to Hanley and Endon.  

And I was right!  There was just room for Uppie to squeeze in between two boats - and the one behind was The Oatcake Boat.  Hanley wanted to go and get oatcakes from Mrs Kay straight away.

'We'll have oatcakes tomorrow,' said Polar.  'We had a big lunch, so we'll just have sandwiches and cake for tea.'

We did have oatcakes on Sunday, but we had them for lunch.  Grizzly did a long walk in the morning, back to our house to collect the car, so Polar could use it to take a lot of our luggage and laundry home, then she walked back to Uppie.

While we were waiting on the boat, a pair of working boats arrived with supplies for the boat moored in front of us.  Hanley looked out of the side hatch to see what they had aboard.

'I like seeing proper working boats,' he said.  'It's what the canals were built for!'

'That's right,' I said.  'Mrs Kay and the other boat traders are what make it a living waterway, not just a tourist attraction.'

There were too many people about on Sunday for us to run around the lake on our own, so we stayed aboard Uppie until Polar was back, and could take us out in our Bear Bag.  

We were just going to ask to jump out for a run on our own, when we spotted a big rat eating crumbs and seeds, so we stayed in our bag after all!

In the morning, it was time to say goodbye to Mrs Kay and Mr Steve on the Oatcake Boat, and set off for Harecastle Tunnel and our mooring at Kidsgrove.  There were quite a few boats gathering to go north through the tunnel and, as we got closer, we met some of the boats who had come south.

Grizzly has steered Uppie through the tunnel more than thirty times now, but he always wears his life-jacket and pays very careful attention to what he is doing, as it can be very dangerous, especially if you are tall, like Polar.

Polar is usually doing boat-tidying chores while we are in the tunnel, but she and Grizzly had spent some of the time at Westport Lake doing those this time, so she could sit and look out with us.  We were almost at the back of a line of boats going through.

We were all being very brave, until we caught sight of a scary skeleton painted on the wall!

'Don't worry, little bears,' said Polar.  'There are stories about there being a spooky boggart in the tunnel, but it's rather too busy in here for anything like that today.'

Our mooring is very close to the north portal of the tunnel so, after letting the other boats pass us, Polar took over on the tiller and eventually reversed Uppie into place.  It took some time, because lots of silt had built up where Uppie had been away for so long, and Polar had to use the propeller to swish it out of the way.  The nice people from the next boat along helped to pull the bows in as close as possible to the bank.

Then it was time to go back to the house.  We put our life jackets away and closed the lid of our boat basket but we weren't sad, because Uppie was home again, and that meant we would have more journeys soon.