Isle of Wight Tweetup

11-14 July 2014

We woke up early so spent some time checking Twitter and Facebook for signs that anyone had found Bob. They hadn't, but our international Twitter friends who had been awake during our night had done a stirling job of spreading the word.

We had a big day ahead so BooBoo and I headed down for breakfast. What a spread! Cereals (four types), three fruit juices, a seriously full English breakfast with bacon, egg, sausage, tomato, fried bread and mushrooms. Asst Di got a veggie sausage and veggie burger instead of the sausage and bacon. Talk about huge! Oh yeah, and tea or coffee and toast. We couldn't manage much of the toast though.

Those attending the Tweetup - Martha, Tabitha, Kolo, BooBoo and I had arranged to meet at the bus station in Ryde in order to catch the open-topped bus. It was a beautiful sunny day which was great for sitting outside on the upstairs of a bus.

Mini Kolo (big Kolo's travelling representative) lives in Ryde, in Baboon HQ and had stopped by Koko's Bear Shop on his way to meet us to see if they had seen baboon Bob. Sadly, they had not seen Bob, but did promise to have a look in case he was there hiding somewhere. That was disappointing, but to help ease our pain, Kolo had bought one of Bob's baboon brother's to come with us.

As we headed out of Ryde, we spotted All Saint's Church. All the stuffies insisted on sharing a seat on the bus but it was a bit of a squish - there were so many of us!

Suddenly, assistant Di spotted she had an email. She couldn't get the phone to download it, arggghh! But, someone had written "We've got him! - oh my, could it be? It could! Just as soon as we got enough signal we found out that, after Kolo had been into Koko's Bear Shop, they had taken a look around and FOUND BOB!!!!! Oh my bear! They'd found him. Seems he was okay. Kolo arranged for his manperson to pop in and pick up Bob and bring him to meet us for lunch. Oh my. What a relief!! Word quickly spread amongst our group and we were able to get the message onto Twitter pretty quickly too.

If I'm honest, I didn't catch much of the narration on our open top bus tour as I was absorbed by finding Bob, but soon we arrived at our stop - we planned to visit Amazon World. I wasn't sure what to expect, I thought it would be fairly small, but I was to be surprised! It was great! They also offered re-entry for the next seven days for the initial £9.50, and had we timed it better we could have attended more feedings than we did.

We had to get our picture with this sigh (below right) - how do they know? heehee

We started with a Geoldi Monkey and this amazing Linnaeus Two-Toed Sloth who moves as though he's in slow-motion. I've never seen one before, I don't think. Very cool.

I tried to do my David Attenborough impersonation - what do you think? There were some cool turtles on a log and I've no idea what bird this is! (The head is folded back, he's not headless!)

Kolo had dashed on ahead as he was meeting his manperson for lunch - with Bob! - but the rest of us found this pawesome bench for a photospot.

We saw crocodiles and I got this great shot of the turtles all lined up one behind the other. The green algae from the water is all over their shell so they look greener and spottier than they really are. Great camouflage though.

The exhibit below left is very dangerous. Oh, okay, it's us! Martha, Tabitha and me! Below centre is a White-Faced Saki Monkey. The tortoises were pretty cool and fairly big.

Another Saki Monkey was watching us, but these feathered pairs both seemed to be oblivious of us - I think love was in the air.

The Emperor Tamarin was cute, with some weird facial hair going on! No idea what this pretty bird is, but he's very cute. I also loved the little terrapins - I had to put the camera on sports setting to stop it being blurred - didn't know they moved so quickly.

They have a very impressive fish tank here - wouldn't want to win one of those at the fair, some of them are huge. There were some more, smaller tortoises. The area, below right, was very impressive looking for a small space, but I didn't see what it was supposed to house!

Theo was excited by this sign, behind which were the bat exhibits, but they didn't cooperate in having their photographs taken. They've got a nice lizard-y chap here too. True to form, Theo had to test the rules (below right) - he claimed this wasn't really a wall.

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I was amazed at this chap - a Larger Hairy Armadillo - he was whizzing about a lot I could barely keep up with him.

Theo liked the Cotton-top Tamarins as they are all fluffy. They were quite curious about him too. Nope, dunno what that bird (below right) is either - I do not know what my assistants were doing this trip, but clearly not their job! Useless!

These Red-Bellied Tamarins or White-Lipped Tamarins, as they are also called, were great fun. This one grabbed Theo's face but - as usual - the assistant missed the picture. They got very excited when we took pictures with Flat Ellie and Edmond (animal experts from Georgia, USA).

An Ostrich and a Red Panda.

Ostrich,Capybara and Tapir.

A White Wallaby (I think), Black and White Ruffed Lemur and the Lesser Spotted Ice-Cream Eaters, er, I mean us! heehee

They have meerkats here - real ones! - though they spent a lot of time underground. We did spot some occasionally.

We were lucky enough to be with the Lemurs at feeding time - who knew these guys were so cute? The Red-Ruffed Lemur didn't mind us bears a bit!

We grabbed a few photos - although Almost Reddy (Sir Reddy the Teddy's stunt double) seems to have been overcome (or maybe the victim of a shove-by furring).

The Ring-Tailed Lemurs were fabulous too.

Tabitha Teddy's likkle human had brought her own Ring-Tailed Lemur puppet and it enjoyed hanging out with members of almost its own kind. The lemurs would bounce from the post (below) to the bench, or the other way - was amazing!

I reckon the shot below left should be their Christmas Card picture. Below centre, you get an idea of how close we came to the lemurs - this lady was a guest like us, she just bent down to take a picture!

We saw African Penguins and a Toco Toucan but I don't remember what this grey and black bird was.

They had a couple of Blue and Gold Macaws and Theo couldn't help practicing for Pirate Night on our October cruise. Neat eh? They are lovely birds, and I'm pretty sure this blue one is not Norwegian.

Well, I suspect we spent longer in here than anticipated, not least by Kolo who had gone on to lunch ahead of us! I was surprised how much there was to see - pretty sure we didn't catch everything and I know we missed the otters. I loved the lemur feeding, being in the environment with them just leaping around was pawesome, these guys can jump! The keeper was cool too, doing his pirate act with a lemur on his shoulder. Being able to chat with the monkeys was cute too.

We ended our journey in the obligatory gift shop. Theirs was large with all kinds of animally stuff, from stuffies (at reasonable prices!) - I was able to get parrots for both Theo and Frank for their pirate costumes on the cruise - magnets, pens and the usual tat. Some great stuff. Overall, we had a fun morning and, while a couple of the exhibits seemed empty, I couldn't really find any reason to drop them a Ted.

We set off to meet Kolo and his people in the Garden Centre next door - they'd been waiting a little while, feeding our little Baboon Bob who was very hungry after his overnight ordeal. The girls - Bear, Tabitha and Willow - got a photo of themselves. They could be triplets! I got this shot with Almost Reddy - we call him that as he looks like my pal Reddy, who wanted to come and couldn't make it, we said he was his stunt double. We both thought it was funny.

As you can see, we were thrilled to get our Bob back. Seems Kolo's manperson had driven him over from Ryde and insisted he wore the seatbelt in the car so he couldn't run off again. He said he had no plans to run off, as he wanted lunch. A big lunch. We grabbed a photo with mini-Kolo and BooBoo's baboon Tony as well as with Bob's brother, who still hasn't picked a name out. For now we're still calling him 2Bob. The little guys were happy to work together to get a drink!

Once we were all together - unfortunately, after Kolo had to leave - we took a group shot. What a cute bunch, eh?

Left to right: Chris, Frank, BooBoo, Willow, Me, Bob and Barney (in front), Tabitha, Martha, Theo, 2Bob (in front), Almost Reddy and Bear.

We checked the open-top bus schedule and found we had fifty minutes before the next bus was due. It was too hot to wait at the bus stop (and it was even hotter inside the Garden Centre) so we came up with a cunning plan. We'd spotted an adventure playground alongside Amazon World - Jurassic Adventure Land and, with our paw stamps, we were eligible to go in. So we did! Just as soon as I was able to escape this dinosaur's evil clutches!!

Along with BooBoo and Willow, Frank and I had a go on the swings. The Triceratops slide was fun, though Theo thought head first was a better way to slide!

We decided to do a little climbing. The wooden climbing frame was tricky as most of us had little arms and legs (although that doesn't seem to have stopped Theo!)

We agreed on a photo shoot when we got to the top, but none of our humans bothered to mention who was behind us! Eek!!

A friend of ours on Twitter - Jeremy (@JezzerBear) does like a gratuitous butt shot or two on Twitter, and has even invented Multibutt (you'll have to follow him to learn more!) However, it has become something of a Tweetup tradition to pay our own homage to Jeremy with our own Multibutt shot.

We didn't think the parking around Amazon World was so bad but this chap obviously had difficulties.

Our time soon ran out and we headed to the bus stop. It was running a little late but turned up eventually. It was much busier when we got on this time so we were spread out around the top of the bus. We passed All Saints Church in Newchurch and saw some great scenery and trees.

In the distance we could see Sandown.

As we got closer to the sea we could see the south coast of England across the water. Soon we arrived on Sandown sea front. It was nicer than I expected.

There were sandy beaches and, as we pulled into the BUS stop at Dinosaur Isle I got this great shot of a bird landing. Not bad for a point and click camera, is it?

There were a bunch of people in the sea doing that sail surfing malarkey and windsurfing. We pulled in to another bus stop, this time at the Isle of Wight Zoo. In the distance we saw this fancy manor house.

As we returned to Ryde we passed another church. This boating lake (below right) had a bunch of swan pedalos, but we didn't have time to have a go. Well, not this year anyway.

I spotted Peter Pan's Funfair and Amusements and the bowling greens. There were pretty flowers planted alongside the road too as we pulled into the bus station.

We decided to finish our #IoWTweetup day on the beach! Tabitha and her humans dashed off to Koko's first but in the meantime we headed for the sand, passing a little marina on the way.

We had loads of fun on the beach. We buried BooBoo! He loved it. We didn't know what to do next so we lay down to think about it, before we decided - we'd spell out T-G-T in bears!! Whaddya think?

When Tabitha arrived, her ikkle human thought it would be a good idea to bury her too, though she decided not to stop at her neck! Eek!!

When the ikkle human wasn't looking, BooBoo snuck in and started to dig Tabitha out. Then Theo went in to help too (and more importantly, get his photo taken!)

Ever-willing to get another photo we all gathered round up to her neck Tabitha, though Almost Reddy found it all too much for him! In sympathy, Frank joined him, but was soon back on his knees again.

I got all the flattties (pictures of those Twitterers that couldn't make the Tweetup) out onto the beach so they too could get a photograph. Below centre and right is Odd Sock (of the Top of the Wardrobe Gang - she has her own books!) - her flattie was in a deck chair so we figured she should get a beach shot of her own.

After our fun on the beach it was time to say our goodbyes. BooBoo and I would see Martha tomorrow, but Tabitha and her humans had to return to the mainland and Martha had to get back to her hotel for dinner.

Last year, we had dinner at Mamma Mia's in Shanklin and decided to go back there again. We were seated straight away but the service was a little bit slow - though it was very busy and Saturday night, of course. We checked out the menu to make sure we got what we wanted and ordered some wine, while Theo ordered a beer.

We ordered a side order of garlic bread each for a starter (two pictures below left) - blimey it was large! We maybe could've shared, though we were all hungry. We were celebrating Bob's return home too so he got to join in the PizzaPawty. The garlic bread was lovely but the pizzas were a teensy bit soggy in the middle - seemed as though they'd been hanging around a bit - they were a long time coming. That said they were good, huge and the servers were friendly, even when a child on the next table accidentally knocked his glass on the floor. They just mopped it up and got on with it. I'd go back again, but maybe when it was less busy, hence the one dropped Ted.

That was us done for the night - back to the B&B and some well earned sleep!