Some of you out there might be familiar with the nursery rhyme riddle ‘As I was Going to St.Ives’, but can you guess the answer. Think about it and I’ll get back to you at the end.
Having watched the famous Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot on the telly, and being the great romantic that I are, I took Mrs.P on the ‘Cornish Riviera Express’ recently, to St.Ives in Cornwall for a few days. Ahh.., for those halcyon days of steam, and the heyday of train travel, as shown in the GWR advertising image from the 1930’s.
Did you know, the largest loco that the GWR built, was ‘ The Great Bear’– not a lot of people know that. (Just goes to show, if you dig deep enough, you’ll nearly always find an interesting ‘bear’ fact)
Back to the present, and today’s equivalent , the 09:17 GWR service from Bristol (Temple Meads). God’s Wonderful Railway initially let themselves down by not identifying the carriages . We’d booked seats in coach ‘H’ but when the train swept in from Paddington (the London station, not the bear) coach ‘H’ was nowhere to be seen. So, we hurriedly climbed aboard and grabbed the nearest free (ie. unreserved) seats we could find. Unfortunately, these were in a coach where we had to listen to a loud woman talk continually to her long-suffering (or deaf?) companion for 3hrs/130miles without pause for breath until they both got off at St.Austell.
Occasionally, she’d say something that sounded like it might be interesting, only to not expand on it, ‘…Portuguese roundabouts…”- I thought that might’ve had potential.
“..gallery in Kennington,..” also had possibility, but she then moved onto Vic, or Rick, or Mick who she’d been with from 2005 to 2012.. Who cares? It was a busy train, and she was 6 rows from us with one of those whiny droney voices that gets under your skin like a mosquito with excema.
I’m sure Monsieur Poirot would have found a way to silence the lady with theatrical panache:-
“Oh dear, Capitan ‘astings,” he might say, while twisting the end of this waxed moustache between his thumb and forefinger, “ it appears ze alphabetti spaghetti consommé ‘as become lodged in ‘er windpipe and she ‘as, quite literally (or literately) choked on her own words”.
The romance of train travel was fading further, as GWR also omitted to provide any refreshments until Plymouth. Ah don’t think yon Brunel bloke would’ve approved. As tourists, we did see some warships at Devonport, the famous red cliffs at Dawlish, and lots of sheeps an’ coos in the wee fields.
At Saltash, where the famous Royal Albert Bridge crosses the Tamar, the Cornish border is indicated by a large sign. ‘KERNOW a’gas dynergh’ – A wee bit like East Berlin, it’s kinda sayin’ ‘YOU ARE NOW ENTERING THE CORNISH SECTOR, please have lots of K’s, R’s & Zee’s to hand, and leave your seagulls in England (on the Devon side)’.
We continued westwards , and into Cornwall – The land of Pirates, Pasties & Piskies, Smugglers, Surfers and Seagulls, Ice Cream, Campervans and dead Tin mines. We got to St.Ives an’ it was hot…., very hot. Too hot for bears wi fur coats. So we dipped our paws in the surf…. *Aaahh!*, relief . (*note the different spelling to the more piratey Arrrgh!)
Another thing St.Ives has by the bucketload is ..ARRR..tists Studios an’ ARRt
This is my ARRR-ty contribution…., whadya think? 
We didn’t know it at the time, but we arrived just too late to witness an enviro-protest, but having seen the messages on the boats in the harbour, I was curious and ‘googled’ it.
Turns out that Extinction Rebellion’s Ocean Red Rebel Brigade had staged a demonstration to draw attention to the mass extinction of marine species and the threat of rising sea levels to coastal communities. That was nice of them. Mrs.P & I have a vested interest in preventing humans eating all the fish – cos’ that’s our job.
Some might think that the protesters are behaving like a bunch of Cnuts – no, not Trump (different spelling) – I mean King Cnut (or Canute) in the futile attempts to stop the waves. But there are different kinds of rising tides – public awareness, engagement and participation is one which may yet make a difference.
Global warming, melting ice-caps and the rising tide of awareness has been big in the news across the country and the world this past month – in advance of the UN Summit on Climate Action. I suppose I’d have been more surprised if coastal Cornwall hadn’t had some environmental protest during this time,……more on this later.
Talking of the environment… 
They’ve got a BIG gull problem here…look at the size o’ thon.. >>>
Surf an’ Bird… well everybody’s heard about, …ouch!, Mrs.P’s not a fan o’ ma singin’
Anyway, I’ve got a great idea for opening up a shop selling a kind of Cornish speciality dish. Pastry wrapped around a seagull filling…. Think I’ll call it 
(sea-gull-pi)
We stayed in the Castle overlooking the town . The sort of place Agatha Christie’s detectives (Miss Marple or Poirot) might’ve stayed at for a jolly weekend of croquet on the lawn, followed by a nice post-dinner Amontillado and a corpse in the walled garden. Simply super.
Thankfully, this bears ‘leetle grey cells’ were not called on to solve the murder of a fellow guest (or travelling companion) and Mrs.P & I enjoyed the weather and location…., very laid back and relaxing…
In the August sunshine, surrounded by golden sandy beaches, it’s not hard to see why Cornwall’s adopting the California lifestyle. Campervans, surfing, an’…. ssh!, I’m sure I heard Dick Dale for a second there..
Surfing’s really just an alternative way for folk’s to make use of the Sea (rising or not), without plundering or polluting. No point in fighting or annoying Mother Nature. Way cooler to just hang out an’hang-ten amid the Atlantic waves, than 9-to-5 in an office.
I mentioned campervans, VWs latest creation, riding the crest of the electric tide is the ID Buzz, stylishly bringing the hippy bus into the 21st century….. ah jist hud tae mention it..it’s so cool.
They’ll sell like retro hot cup-cakes .. well, erm.. the automotive equivalent. You get the picture
We were only in St.Ives for a few days, and sad to leave…
Disappointed we never saw any pirates (Blackbear-d or Long John Sil-Bear), or smugglers, “arrgh”…, but, hud oan, £3.50 for a Cornish Pasty? Mmm, more highway robbery than piracy.
We never saw the bloke wi’ his wives an’ cats either
We stopped off in Bristol on our journey back North. We’s been ‘ere afore, an’ we loike the vibe, so’s we comes back. Mmm…the west country accent’s needing a bit of work.., sounds a wee bit Hobbitty Shire-speak.
We always look for kin-folk when we’re on our travels, an’ we found a few Bears in Bristle without really trying too hard. It’s nice too, to find bears in unexpected places. (FYI: Expected places might include ‘the woods today’)
In Bristol, we had the Cathedral Bears: Broon Bears, but still, it’s always nice to see how folks’ve thunk about us bears over the years.
I spotted these on seat cushions in the choir stalls
I think that these show…erm, various states of ‘bare’ , here a brown bear dances between 2 bare ladies with wheelbearrows – probably signifying the central role that entertainment and fun (ie. bears) occupies between toil and labour.
In the image on the right, a brown bear ‘bearing’ a bloke, a farmer, feeds hay to a camel. This marks a significant advance in attitudes to animal welfare from the medieval stereotype of a bloke in armour skewering a dragon. It shows the usefulness and tolerance of our fore’bears’ in helping around the farm before tractors were invented…, of course, payment in porridge helped
We spent a few hours In the Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, and found this wee chap. Grotesquely cute, with bags of attitude – an 18th century salt-glazed punk polar-bear – looking remarkably contemporary. I liked. .. but then, what’s not to like about a polar-bear?
After doing free-ish touristy stuff for most of the day, we found ourselves in the smallBAR .
This was surprising because ;
a) We weren’t lost
b) It wasn’t that small 
A lively, friendly bar with a wide range of beers from independent breweries – we had a couple of HepCats followed by an Alligator Tugboat. The menu isn’t big, but the food is bri(sto)lliant !! Chicken wings + chips + hot Korean sauce – 2 happy stuffed bears. Just go there! It has a card only/no cash policy – a sign of impending plasticisation, the EPOS era is upon us.
We also found another bear to justify our mission here. On the wall was a poster advertising the strangely intriguing ‘Running with Sceptres’ Lager – this shows a polar bear, and a tiger, a beaver, a pelican marching uphill. Why? 
As we were in King Street, opposite the orangey-ist pub (The King William) I’ve ever seen, it could be an ‘animaloyalist’ march – that’s a new word, and a disturbingly interesting thought.
What next? – a gay ‘pride’ march with a bunch of happy lions, penguins parading in support of David Attenborough – climate change polar bears protesting… who knows, these days.
As I mentioned earlier, leading up to the UN Summit on Climate Action, there have been a number of enviro/eco news stories in the last couple of weeks TV screens. Among these, in Birkenhead, was the naming ceremony for the polar research ship ‘RSS Sir David Attenborough’. This boat will be an important tool in the scientific challenge of tackling climate change. After almost nearly being named Boaty McBoatface, the famous broadcaster and naturalist then went on to talk about catching his dinner in the River Mersey.
Sir David is seen here explaining the size of the one that got away, ..looks about a 2lb Perch sized.
Oh yes it did (I know what you’re thinking, sounds familiar) – the ceremony closed with a parade of penguins (OK, children dressed up)
Looking for the Bus Station on the map, I spotted The Bear Pit (aka St.James Barton Roundabout). That looks interesting says I, so I did some research and found another Great Bear – meet Ursa – at 12ft (3.5m) tall, she’s pretty impressive!
From local press it appears there’s been trouble bruin… for Ursa – an’ the Bear Pit generally, this past year.
Her local environment, which had been a community action zone, is under threat by Bristol City Council who want to redevelop the area which has been troubled by anti-social and violent confrontations recently.
The wonderfully named ‘Peoples Republic of Stokes Croft’ – sounding (it can’t be accidentally) a bit like the Popular Front of Judea or..erm, the People’s Front of Judea in Monty Python’s Life of Brian – Anyway the PRSC and BIG (Bearpit Improvement Group) have been asked to vacate the area & take their bear with them.
News Update: during the time it’s taken me to write this – (big paws, small keyboard remember) Ursa is no more, a victim of the political climate changing – and she was dismantled last week.
Let’s all paws for a moments silence.
There seems to be an anarchic ‘edge’ to the city with ‘rules’ apparently optional especially among the enviro-lycrists who’re road users one minute then pavement pedallists the next – and always at speed. GRRR…
Then there’s the grafittists,…. or is that graffiti-ists ?
Is it art or just vandalism?
All a matter of opinion – One bear’s snack is… sorry, was another man’s lunch
Anyway, Bristol’s got loads o’them… based on what I saw, I think Vienna (see prev blog) might have the edge on the graffiti / street ARRT… but then again, I’ve not spent much time in Bristol. What stuff we did see mostly had a message (provocative or humorous, sometimes both).. that probably went over our heads in Austria.
– the first one we saw in Bristol, was this, ‘Coat of Arms‘ above a café, as we were heading down the steep hill from Clifton. It’s an old gag, an’ I’m sure Tommy Cooper did it – but I couldn’t find a clip on’t interweb thingy.
I told Mrs.P that I was going to paint a mural, twice as good, on the end of our house.
When she asked – why will it be twice as good?
I said, “I’ll give it two coats!”
Bristol is Banksy’s home turf.
Don’t get me wrong, the paintings are good, but it’s the media ‘hype’ surrounding them that grates. The all-embracing hipster-coolness of discovering an original social comment stencilled on the bus shelter outside your favourite wine bar. Then sit back and wait for the inevitable scramble as unscrupulous ‘agents’ swoop to cash-in, .. sorry, ‘preserve’ the artwork for future generations.
I read a couple of very interesting articles which (I hope) has stopped me putting previously uninformed opinions into this blog.
I can now appreciate that he (they maybe?) doesn’t benefit financially directly from any subsequent sale of the ‘artified walls/fences/doors (bus shelter?) by the galleries and auction houses.
And I think the very clever approach of Pest Control authentication is smart thinking
Ultimately, for me, grafitti, like nature, is mostly better left where you find it – in it’s original environment (ie. the location where it was painted)
I do like the moral dilemma posed;
Go ahead, ask yourself. Would you feel lucky? Well would you? Would you (1) be pis…cheesed-off if someone ‘stencilled a topical cartoon’ on your garage door or (2), … would you cash in on your ‘good fortune’ and sell the door, or (3) would you deny the public viewing, paint over the image and restore your fence/wall to it’s original Farrow & Ball no.28 ‘Dead Salmon’ – that’s a sort of grey with a wee hint of pink. In our house dead salmon is illusory (and tasty). If you think you saw it in the fridge, it’ll not be there when you go back to check. For any non-Hipster-cool folk out there. F+B also do ‘Mole’s Breath’ (no.126) – if you want a dark ‘battleship’ grey wall with a velvety finish.
Personally, I’d settle for a bit of re-harling.
Bristol has A R T as in ‘big’ art – Way bigger than Art Garfunkel who is only 5’ 9” , I know, I was surprised too.
Some of these, (like in Quay St) are huge, an’ I’ve no idea who has the time/money to do some of these, or how they get access without permission/knowledge.
Like most things they come in a variety of flavours to suit all tastes. ..thought provoking… uplifting… funny … arty… or just annoying crap.
There are also other possibly better artworks (& artists) out there that don’t get the same attention.
Thinkin’ about it, we saw more Banksy than we’d planned.. by the Banksy the Avon. 
‘The Grim Reaper’,– was painted onto the hull of the nightclub boat ‘Thekla’, (currently berthed up-river in the Mud Dock) – we saw that in the M-Shed, an interesting place on the quayside that celebrates all sorts of Bristolly things. ..but not hedgehogs apparently.
The ‘Well Hung Lover’ – “looks nothing like you”, said Mrs.P. I think she meant that I don’t hang out of windows.
Taking a shortcut through the dock warehouses to get to the wee ferry, we accidentally came across ‘Girl with a Pierced Eardrum’ – Big , an quite sad looking..
Unprepared, tourists that we are – we then missed the opportunity to visit Aardman Studios by 20 yards –duh! If we’d turned right onto Gas Ferry Road we’d have found ourselves at the home of Creature Comforts and Wallace & Gromit. Yup, you guessed, we turned left
Oh well, maybe next time..
That said, we did see Gromit about town …, in pursuit of “a nice bit o’ Wensleydale” probably, and to raise funds for Bristol Children’s Hospital (£2.3m). Well done lad!
I’m now seriously considering going to ‘Cheesefest’ when it comes to Scotland in November
News Update: ‘Devolved Parliament‘ – Banksy’s big Chimpy painting that we saw in the Museum – just sold at auction today (4oct19) for £9.9m!!
WOW! – I’ll just repeat that, W O W !!
Further up the road from the Bearpit, on the gable end of a building is another Banksy
‘Mild Mild West’ – featuring a polar-bear throwing a Molotov cocktail at police.
A bloke on the bus (a Bristol Lodekka btw) told me that this (possibly) refers the 1998 Cheese riots when access to imported stocks of extra mild cheddar stored at the dockside Cheese Warehouse was denied.
Here’s a little Bristol inspired imagery – with a wee nod to MrB 
I think I’ll call it – ‘Bear with an Orange Balloon’
Many years ago, it was from Bristol, at the BBC Natural History Unit that the puffin faced presenter Johnny Morris (with his funny voices) presented Animal Magic a weekly TV show that introduced wildlife into 60s/70s homes. In today’s multi-channel internet 4/5G connected world, it’s hard to imagine how little awareness the general public had then of environmental/ecological issues. But a lot of the foundations were laid here. (ps. He also voiced some of ‘Creature Comforts’)
September 20th and the pictures from around the globe are truly staggering. From Aukland to Anchorage it’s estimated that 7.6 million people in 150 countries turned out to make their concerns known and demand action.
Climate Strike. What started as a one girl protest about a year ago, caught the attention of the press and other kids who may have partially used it as an excuse to dodge school, today, (like the song says), friends – this is now a movement.
Stockholm 2018
Edinburgh 2019
No getting away from it, the whole issue of climate change has gathered momentum.
I especially liked the Dundee folks (on the left) encouraging slogan – ‘Heat Pehs not the Planet’. It’s aye bin the way . Pehs should be served hot, wi grease runnin doon yer chins. Naeb’dy likes a cauld peh.
At the UN Summit, Greta, again makes America’s ‘Make America Great Again’ President Trumplethickskin look awkwardly out of step with world opinion. With the focussed intensity of youth – check out the fierce look she gives Trump. As an expert in ‘hard’ stares, Cousin Paddington would’ve approved.
23 Sept. – Google marked today with this image (doodle).
A cutesy planet wearing a dead leaf
Apparently today is the start of Autumn in the Northern Hemisphere
Going back, to 21st June*, they marked the start of Summer with this.
I meant to comment on this when I first saw it, re-climate change -with palm trees and a sun-lounger at the Nth.Pole.
Like an accidentally defrosting fridge.. this is not good.
What all the protesters, striking schoolkids, Greta and Mrs.P an’ me want to see is the restoration of cold to the Arctic. Switch the thermostat back to ‘sub-Zero’, an’ lets get back to COOL
ICE, ICE, Baby….. that’s what we want
I’m optimistic..gotta be. Back in June I saw this facetwit post…, yeah, look around.. car plug-in points have kinda snuck in, and they’re everywhere. Maybe spread thinly, but when you stop and think how quickly they’ve appeared, coming from nowhere. That supports the momentum theory. People are ‘on-board’ with the need for change.
Paradoxically (oh that’s a nice word – don’t get to use that very often), it never ceases to amaze me that, on one paw – while we’re constantly being told of climate change, and the need to change to renewable energy sources, re-cycle materials and reduce consumption. On the other paw, 21st century living is forcing us to rely more and more on plug-in gadgets over and above the ‘basic’ household devices – TV, cooker, fridge, washing machine
Things like phones/i-pads/tablets/e-cigs/internet routers/TV set-top decoders/alexa. Ironically, even the SMART meter in your home, needs to be plugged in – using electricity to tell you how much electricity you’re using.
It’s a power hungry world, and we’re now handing more power to the power generating companies, by plugging the transport sector into the National Grid. Just wait. How long will it be before they exercise their new monopoly and flex their price hikes?
A hundred years ago, folks were up to their oxters in horse-poo.. then hallelujah, along came the motor car.. progress, eh, .. be careful what you wish for.
Thought for the day:
I took some photos at the weekend of some Austin-Healeys and couldn’t help thinking that I was witnessing the demise of another endangered species .. the classic car enthusiast. There’s been a sea-change of public opinion re-fossil fuelled transport and at some point in time the petrol pumps will be turned off.. It’s not all doom and gloom though, check this out – looks like these guys in Poland could convert the bearmobile to electric … mmm, interesting.
While it’s hard to condone driving a car that gets just 20mpg,, it’s hard to side with the philistines who see cars as just ‘transport’ – a means of getting from A to B. They just ain’t got no soul.
It’d be like having just ‘food’ – sustenance but no variation. No highs (eg. Currywurst and smoked cheese pancake) or lows (sprouts)
Or just ‘sound’ – even discordant jazz or hip-rap is preferable. There has to be a wee bit room in the world for emotional appreciation …for the Beach Boys maybe.
Cue music…, now get out there, get ‘on-board’ and catch the wave…
Oh,… bet you thought I’d forgotten. The answer.
How many were there going to St.Ives ?
Some of you clever clogs might’ve thought that 1 was the correct number
– with 2402 [1 + (7 x 7 x 7 x 7)] coming from St.Ives.
Under certain circumstances this might be true.
However, on the day in question, as I was going to St.Ives (from St.Erth), the train (a 4-car class 150) was full, with people standing in the aisles. So that’s 4 x [147(seated) plus 20? Standing] plus the driver. = 669
Hands up if you got that answer…
.. what?, nobody?
Paul R Bear 
