A few weeks ago, Freyja drew my attention to the existence of the New Forest Bear Festival. Further investigation revealed that it was on a Sunday at the end of June in Beaulieu, in the centre of the New Forest. I like Beaulieu (which is pronounced biew-lee), although I have only ever driven through it and not had a chance to inspect the village.
Then it crossed our mind that not only would it make a nice day out for Freyja, The Builder and me, it would also make a nice day out for The Builder’s mother.
So we booked two rooms at The Swan and trundled down, accompanied by Freyja, Bernard and Sleepy Hippo, on Saturday afternoon and lobbed into The Swan in time for a pleasant drink by the riverside in the sunshine and a lovely dinner in the pub. They’ve been refurbishing the rooms at The Swan. They are very swanky.
We feared rain at the bear festival. So we had our golf umbrellas at the ready, collected Gwen and trundled off through The Forest.
The bear festival was fun. Beaulieu is a lovely village and it was a pleasure to poke around in it. There was a display of artist’s bears and antique bears in the village hall. The bear shop was (obviously) open. Actually, all of the shops were open and playing. The photography studio was set up to do portraits of people’s bears. Freyja had Bernard and Sleepy Hippo’s portrait taken. There were stalls and things in the school ground and fun things to do on the village green. Freyja also had a drawn portrait of Bernard and Sleepy Hippo done. That’s come to live at The Sidings with us. I must buy it a frame! Freyja and I liberated a princess teddy from the clutches of a dragon (and won a little packet of erasers for succeeding). We met some of Freyja’s correspondents on an internet forum (who had alerted her to the bear festival). The only downsides were the lunch in the local pub, which was incredibly expensive and emphatically not worth the money (we don’t mind spending a lot on good food, but very gristly beef we do mind!), and the “wheelchair-friendly” track to the village green which was so “wheelchair-friendly” that we nearly catapulted Gwen out of her chair. Again! And once again it was the seat belt that kept her in. She laughed. Again! We did the treasure hunt, ate ice cream, stroked teddy bears, wandered around and all in all had a really good day.
In the event, it didn’t rain – though it made a half-hearted attempt once or twice.
Then we took Gwen home and all (except for Gwen) relocated to Cambridge, where Christian and Cassie were staying for two nights. We sat outside in Taffa and Gareth’s garden and ate pizza and drank wine and found out what Christian and Cassie had been up to. We didn’t go to the fair, largely because by the time we’d wined and dined it was after 10:00 and The Builder and I were tired and sleepy, and Christian and Cassie were jet-lagged. I believe going to the fair was moved to Monday evening.
Monday dawned bright and warm and sunny and summery. I think, with the possible exception of T&G’s wedding last August, it was the nicest summer day we’ve had for a couple of years. It seemed incredibly wasteful of a sunny day off work to lounge about in bed, so we went and sat outside in the garden with cups of coffee. Tabitha came out and joined us. One by one everyone else emerged. We had sticky buns from the local baker for breakfast and pondered our plans for the day. C2 wanted to go punting, but The Builder was unlikely to want to go. I wanted to hit the market. Freyja wanted to go bowling. But bowling was going to be too complicated because we didn’t have enough room in the car for all of us and the bowling rink is quite some distance from Arbury. Eventually, after great deliberation, we decided that we would walk into town and visit the market and then we would walk along the river to either the Green Dragon or to the Boathouse for a spot of lunch, after which Freyja, The Builder and I would go back to the house, pack and head back to Sheffield and T, G and C2 would go punting. This caused Freyja a great deal of mirth because, punting aside, this is pretty much what we always do when we’re in Cambridge. Her amusement wasn’t that this was what we had decided to do – but that it had taken us so long to decide it!
Off we went to the market, where I found the backpack I had been looking for and a pair of shoes I hadn’t. We wandered around the shops and had iced coffee. We strolled along the river and decided The Boathouse would do for lunch. Cassie had a steak and ale pie – which seems to have been the height of her ambition for English food. We sat outside for lunch, on the lower terrace by the river and watched the swans and cygnets, the boats and life drifting past. It was all lovely.
Then T, G and C2 went off to find a punt, and Freyja, The Builder and I walked back to the house, packed up and headed back to Sheffield, where we dropped Freyja at her place. Then we headed home – and I didn’t make lime cordial, or gooseberry jam, but we did sit outside until it was quite late, and we drank wine and pondered things and planned things and had burgers for dinner (Not take-away burgers and certainly not frozen burgers - bleurgh!). Mr Sainsbury’s finest burgers – and they were remarkably nice, it must be said).
Christian and Cassie made their way to London yesterday and today are off to Athens, from where they are heading to a Greek Island, before heading off to visit Austin for a few days. Before they came to England they were in America, where Christian was presenting a paper at a conference. It’s a pity they couldn’t stay longer – but it was nice to see them. And they brought magnificent weather with them.
More Australians next week. Pat Smith and her brother and sister-in-law will be in the neighbourhood.
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