My human Twitter friend Lillian @IcyPinkLemonade was visiting the UK from her home in Connecticut, in the United States on what we decided to describe as the #IcyPinkTweetupTour. Several tweetups (meet-ups of Twitter folks, and their humans, in the case of anipals). On this day, we were heading to Whitby, in the North-East of England.
We - my buddies Frank, Theo and I, together with newbie furends Edwina (soon to move to my furends Chalky and Cuddles @ChalkyBear13) and a similar-looking pink and blue ted headed for Whitby at a little after 8am. We also had a big group of flatties with us. Flatties are pictures of friends who can't make the events or tours in bearson.
Our first stop was about eighty minutes north in Cheshire, to pick up my pals Reddy and Pink Ted (below centre) @reddy1408 and their human mum, Debbie. Reddy's mum is leader of the Panda Jumper Army - so far she has made more than seventy panda jumpers for my Twitter pals. She brought two more with her for the new bears who immediately put them on. The journey continued.
With a short coffee stop just outside York - as we were a little early - we arrived in York at 11.30am. We were meeting Scamp @SirScamp here, with his pals (below right) and human, Ross. We'd never met so I had to walk around the station a little bit before he spotted me and joined us at the car.
The sun had come out on the journey but as we crossed the North Yorkshire Moors it got more cloudy and hazy, so much so that as we finally approached Whitby we could barely see the sea or the Abbey in the distance.
We arrived at our friends' amazing seafront apartment just after 1pm. When we first met Lucky and Bluey @LUCKYBLUEYHONEY on Twitter, there had just been the two of them, but over a year later and there were loads more of them - Honey, Hugo, Colin the cow, Lenny the kitten and lots more. We'd had our first tweetup with them last April and you can read about that here if you're interested. Their mum and dad are (another) Debbie and Chris.
Here they all are (Lucky and Bluey are the two at the back):
Lillian @icypinklemonade, BooBoo @BooBooBearGreen, with mummy Lou, Rosie @Rosiebear90 with Ba and Lizzie and her human mum Cat and M @SecretBear007, Q, Emily from Spy HQ, with their human Secretary "Sec" and Gracie, with human mum Fiona (or Fred as we know her from Twitter) @summerstorm and her husband, Billy had arrived ahead of us. It was quite the crowd and we all took time to get reaquainted, or meet for the first time for some of us!
As we are mostly bears on Twitter we all gathered on the sofa for a photo. Lillian joined us as she was our guest from America and on Twitter is an honorary bear. Various gifts were passed around, magnets and pens, brooches, I even got a knitted bookmark, which was cool! I pawed out some chocolates from Cadbury too. Those that hadn't met before - many of us had - made introductions and chatted. Photos were taken and bears hugged and chatted together.
Soon Lucky's mum suggested it was time for lunch. You can't come to Whitby and not have fish and chips so she took our order and she and Billy set off to collect it. She came back with loads! The food was all passed around and salt and vinegar added. Yum!!
After lunch it was time to take a walk into Whitby town. It wasn't far away, though we did have to make a bit of a pit-stop at a wool shop. There is a lot of knitting goes on on Twitter, and not just panda jumpers. On the way there I spotted the Abbey, but it's hard to get it and me in focus in the same shot apparently. I suspect the assistant is just useless. We saw Botham's shop - they do some really nice food. Lucky and Bluey sent me a hamper from them for Christmas! It wasn't long before we were down by the harbour.
Once we were down in the town we decided we should have a coffee so headed into Costa Coffee. As we waited for ours, we got the flatties out for another picture or two. Then we chatted some more as we drank our coffee. The chap below right is Flat Stanley - he's here from Chicago and is a traveller like me.
Time was getting on - it was already four-thirty and we had to leave at five-thirty to get Scamp back for his train home and us back to the West Midlands. We set off to take a proper look at the harbour.
Then we walked along to the harbour wall. The sea was a little rough.
We climbed up the hill out of the town up to West Cliff. Up here we had a good view of Whitby Abbey.
On top of the hill, up on West Cliff, we got pictures with the the whalebone arch and even got a photo with Captain Cook. Well, we had seen his grave in Hawaii. It would have been rude not to say hello.
Soon we were back at the apartment where there was just time for raspberry amaretto cake. There's always time for cake.
At 5.40pm there was just time for goodbyes all around and we were heading south. We made it to York Railway Station - to drop off Sir Scamp and Ross - with fifteen minutes to spare, then dumped Reddy off at the Services where his chauffeur was missing in action (he soon turned up). We made it back home to the West Midlands just before 11pm. It had been a long fun day, hanging out with my buddies. It seems the cat was pleased to see Theo as she sat on his lap! Eek!! He had to have a beer to recover. So he said. What a great day and so much fun to see my pals from across the United Kingdom.
