being more toddy – my first #tweetup

i’ve been wanting to go on a #tweetup for many years, but it’s difficult with a human like mine.

i sneekily booked the hotel to go to tgt’s #bemoretoddy 2019 being held at the black country living museum (bclm) on sunday 27th october. not our favourite hotel but i couldn’t afford the extra to have a comfortable bed and soft pillow :o/

we very nearly didn’t go, but on saturday we caught the 10 o’clock train to birmingham, had some dinner, then travelled on to dudley and caught a bus to the end of the road.

we had a couple of hours before we could check in to the hotel, so we went to the bclm to have a reckie. it had been raining the whole day, and was still raining so as soon as we’d got our ticket we hopped on a bus that took us to the other end of the ‘village’.

our favourite shop in town was the motorbike shop, and despite the inclement weather i decided it was a good time for an ice cream ;o)

back at the entrance we went to where we’d caught the bus earlier because we’d seen the motor garage; i love old vehicles so i loved seeing all the old fire engine, motorbikes & cars.

an old fire engine

‘frisky’ what a name for a car!

a bean tin

old blue car

after checking in and a short rest we had a walk to the supermarket at the end of the road – it had finally stopped raining which was good, as the hotel we were staying at didn’t have luggage facilities, so my human hadn’t got a change of clothes!

apples and water bought, we returned to the hotel before it got dark…

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it was a long time ’til eleven o’clock the next morning because the clocks had gone back, but it eventually came. it only took twenty minutes ‘looking’ around the shop before the human plucked up enough courage to approach the bear table.

although i ‘knew’ quite a few of the bears on the #tweetup i only really recognised reddy, but him and his human gave us a warm welcome :o)

a few bears & their humans went to the mine; the rest of us carried on to the other end of the village. when the others caught up, most had fish & chips, but me and the human had a pack up so had a look in a few buildings close by.

my favourite kind of kitchen – with a helter skelter outside!

with the human

just before we went on the canal ride, i had my photo taken with @sonningbear & @tedonhols (photo borrowed from mr t bear)

me with hanley, endon, sonning & ted

the whole gang (photo borrowed from tgt)

after the canal ride (and an ice cream for me) we all made our way back to the entrance and i just had time for a quick photo before i dashed off to catch a bus to the station before it got dark.

frank, boo boo, theo, junior popp, ted, tgt, me and four woollies

as it turns out i needn’t have rushed off so soon. the first train was cancelled, then the next train (an hour later) showed as cancelled ten minutes before it was due – arrrggghhh. *panic*

we made our way back to the bus stop. it was dark at this stage so i couldn’t read the timetable to see where the buses were going, apart from it was going towards birmingham. luckily there was a woman waiting for the bus, who was also going towards b’ham new street. she advised the human to get a bus/tram ticket (tram? i didn’t even know birmingham had trams!), showed her when to get off the bus, and over the road to the tram station, where it drew up a minute later and we were on our way to the train station – hooray! thank you lovely lady!

we’d missed the hourly train by about ten minutes, but we hadn’t had our tea yet so that’s the first thing we did when we got there. but we finally got home two hours later than planned! *flop*

on the plus point we got the full price of the train ticket back for being so late, so it only cost the £5.20 bus/tram ticket :o)

thank you to all the lovely people and bears we met & special thanks to toddy (“be more toddy”) and a certain bear (misquote- “get over yourself”) who got us through our first #tweetup; and snuffy who’s helped me through some difficult days xx