Latest re-homings

The rehoming project is picking up again for the summer (baboons are so happy to get homes that they will travel at any time but they prefer travelling in summer weather if possible).

Five baboons have been rehomed since the last update.

This little chap went to Glasgow to live with @ThisBear, one of our oldest, most respected and loved friends.  I am so glad Mr Bear was able to give him a home.

Gilbert, who is a little finger puppet baboon arrived in time to enter #TeddyOlympics in the treats section, with Bear.  I am very proud of all the baboons who have entered #TeddyOlympics, but to do it so soon after arrival is really quite something don't you think.  Here they are with their Treats entry.

Another little chap has gone to live in the north east of England with @BooBooBearGreen.

 

 

 

BooBoo is an Arsenal fan so his baboon is named Tony after our greatest Arsenal captain, Tony Adams.  BooBoo is so kind and patient he let Tony climb all over him.



As regular readers will probably know we went for a picnic and met @MarthaBBear and @TourGuideTed and rehomed baboons with them in the fur.

Mini-Kolo (cool dude) rehomed this little chap with Martha, she called him Barney or Barnie, because she thought he looked like a Barney or Barnie. 

Mini-Kolo rehomed another chap, brother of @ThisBear's Gilbert, with @TourGuideTed

This little chap was named Bob (after West Bromwich Albion player Bob Taylor).

Both Barney and Bob were very lucky they had holidays after they were rehomed.

Then there was another rehoming.  This chap, Marley Mandrill, went all the way to Oregon to join @Cybercat919 (Willy's), primate family.

 

It would appear that he is learning to drive, but he needs to realise that you need to look out of the windscreen, not have your back to it.

I wanted to show more pictures of some of these chaps, but Blogger is being tempramental about uploading pictures today, I will try to add some more later.

I have another rehoming underway, and that will be number 80!! He will be going to Toronto!  Imagine my friends have been kind enough to rehome 80 baboons and give them loving homes and exciting lives that suit their needs and interests.

Thank you to all of you.  HUGS HUGS HUGS!!

Freddy's walk

Its been very hot and Mini-Kolo (Jackson) has been out a lot, young Freddy has been really keen to go for a walk, so yesterday Freddy went out.  Freddy's walk went from home to Bembridge and back.  So Freddy started from home.

Freddy was excited so he got ready and sat outside waiting.  We made him wear a T-shirt because of the hot sun.  Baboons don't really do well with sunscreen, it gets stuck in our fur.  Freddy walked down our street, down the High Street and the tourist street, Union Street and he reached the seafront.  He stopped to look at the boats in Ryde Marina.

He had to look from a bit of a distance as it was windy and we didn't want him blowing off the wall and ending up in the harbour.  The Freddy walked along the seafront and reached Appley Tower.

He had a long way to walk so he didn't go inside this time.  The tower is a Victorian folly built when the Appley estate went right down to the seafront at Ryde.

Freddy carried on, past the bright lights, noise and crowded beaches of Ryde, on to Springvale.  Where he first look at a countryside view, you may be able to make out the cows under the tree.

Just across the road were beaches and sea.

Much more peaceful than Ryde.  Then Freddy went on to the next place, Seaview, where he decided to take up sailing.

I'm not sure whether he realised that he needed to be in the water!!  However, this was safer.

From Seaview there are two ways to get to Bembridge, around the coast or across the countryside.  You can only get all the way around the coast when it is low tide, yesterday morning was high tide so Freddy missed out on the beautiful bays at Seagrove, Priory and St Helen's.  However, he still had a great walk.  He came across this old house just as he was leaving Seaview.

This was originally a boat house built in 1557, it does look very beautiful.  Freddy didn't mind not going to the bays because he went across some beautiful countryside instead.

Freddy crossed three fields and got to the village of St Helen's.  That is a village with an enormous village green.  After he left there he got to the road that leads around to Bembridge.  He met some shady characters lurking around some houseboats.

This houseboat is a floatel!!  Moving on Freddy got to the famous Toll Gate cafe in Bembridge.  Freddy confirmed the high baboon rating that we always give this cafe.  He had a toasted cheese sandwich with salad.

Freddy needed lunch, he had walked nearly 6.5 miles and had to walk back the same way.

Freddy really enjoyed his day out and he did really well to walk so far.  I expect he will want to go out again!!

Shalfleet and Hamstead Cliffs

Today my people took a day off work for walking.  We were lucky with the weather as they had booked it a while ago.  We were going to go out for breakfast but the weather forecast said it would be very hot so we decided to have breakfast at home and make an early start.

We started at a village called Shalfleet. We parked near the New Inn pub, unfortunately it wasn't open yet, you can see by the early morning shadows that there was a while to go before opening time.  This pub gets a good baboon rating, great fish and chips and other meals, a great old building and fantastic puddings.  We went there with @hi_im_monkey for his only night on the island and he had fish and chips.

Shalfleet is a small village near Yarmouth and it has an interesting history, it has been quite wealthy in trading days because of the harbour at Newtown Creek nearby.  I'll show you that later.  It has a old church that was mentioned in the Domesday Book.  The big tower was added in the 11th century so the people could hide in there if the French invaded.

We went over lots of fields.

and through some wooded parts.

We did have to cross some roads very carefully.  It is a beautiful walk.  After a number of fields and woods we started to gently climb down the cliff path towards the beach.  On the way I stopped to look at the views.

You can see the south coast of the mainland from here, the town is Lymington where the ferries, that link with Yarmouth on the island, go from.

Looking the other way (eastwards), I could see all the way to Cowes, the famous island sailing town.  You can just make it out behind the trees.

 



Before we actually got to the beach I stopped to pay my respects at this monument.

It is in memory of two young men who were lost at sea, off the Hamstead ledges, in 1932.  Soon after that we got to the beach.

You can see how calm and blue the sea was!!  I could have stayed here, but it's an eight mile walk and we were only about half way through.

We climbed back up and crossed a couple of fields, taking time to check out the hay on the way, it was a good spot for a rest.

 

Behind me is Newtown Creek, you will see it closer up soon and you can just see Cowes sticking out in the distance.

We crossed a couple more fields and reached these wetlands.  They do look a bit dry, but that is because they are tidal, not a drought!  We discovered they were tidal a couple of years ago when we stopped to eat our lunch and gradually our feet got wet!  Heee heee!

While we were crossing here our manperson (Stephen) thought he saw an otter but we don't know for sure and I don't know whether there are otters there, it would be nice if he did though wouldn't it.

We crossed the wetlands, on creaky duckboareds, and got to Newtown Creek.

Its very popular with sailors who walk up the creek to the New Inn.  There is another walk we will do soon where I will show you more of the creek, harbour and the village of Newtown.  We had to walk away from it.  Here we reached the slightly dull bit of the walk, about half an hour on a long straight dirt road.  After that you turn off through a woody bit and cross this wobbly bridge (with your heart in your mouth)!

We made it phew!!  Then we crossed a field with these lovely blue flowers , it was full of flowers and grasses, we liked these blue flowers especially!

We walked down the side of this field and over a style, there are a lot of styles on this walk for our little legs to climb.  Then we had to very carefully walk for a short way along the side of a busy road and then, even more carefully, cross the road.

After that we crossed a couple of fields and then we were back to the fields we started with, we crossed them and walked through the village, back to the car.  We collected our yummy picnic (left over pizza, corn chips and dips from yesterday oh and yes, some salad!).  We ate that alongside Newtown Creek.

It was a lovely walk on a very hot day.  We came home and had tea and buns!!

Thank you for reading!

Picnic and rehomings

Today was the big #IOWTweetUp in Shanklin.  We were having a picnic so I made pizza.

Mini-Kolo was going along and it was a very hot day so he needed a hat and sunglasses, no not sunscreen, we are baboons, baboons = hairy, sunscreen can be horrible in your fur.  He was waiting to leave early.

Oh yes he felt like a real cool dude!  We picked @TabithaTeddy and her sister Squirrel up at the hovercraft and then we were on our way to Shanklin.

We met @MarthaBBear as soon as we arrived and we got chatting.

Mini-Kolo thinks he is charming the girls here.  He is not completely outnumbered as Chris the penguin IS a boy so he didn't have things all his own way.

One of Mini-Kolo's jobs was to re-home two baboons, here he is handing this little chap over to Martha.  She called him Barney.  His brother just moved in with BooBooBearGreen.  More about that rehoming in another blog when we catch up on the rehomed baboons.

@TourGuideTed arrived with a massive load of crisps, chocolate and cakes!!  Yayayaaa well done Ted!  He also brought his pals Frank and Theo with him so, with them and the rehomed baboons there were quite a lot of boys by then. 

The other re-homing that Mini-Kolo was to do was with Ted.

We don't know what he will be called yet.  His brother has just gone to live with @This_Bear, again more about that in the next re-homing blog.

They go down to picnicing.

There was lots of food, pizza, chocolate, crisps, cake, corn chips, dips.  Hey they were up to the job!

Lucky rehomed baboons had a picnic and then they are both having a holiday.

Now there is a little known by-law that says baboons are not allowed to play crazy golf, it may sound strange but it is for the protection of you, the public, try to imagine a baboon with a golf club and ball, yes you see it all makes sense now you think of it!

The others did play crazy golf.  @TourGuideTed started it off!

@TabithaTeddy had a go!

Then @MarthaBBear had her turn!

When Mini-Kolo got home there were more treats @TourGuideTed had given him presents, a lovely yellow T-shirt saying Orland Florida (like Martha's), I think he looks handsome in yellow and some Muddy Bear biscuits that we can all share.  Thank you Ted they look yummy and Mini-Kolo's shirt is a great colour!!

Well thank you to all of you for a lovely day out, Mini-Kolo had a ball and thank you for the presents.  I hope you have a good stay here, the weather is hot, hot, hot!!  So have a lovely fun time on the island.

HUGS HUGS HUGS

Ventnor to Blackgang

I am starting with this picture because it was our town's Arts Parade last weekend.  I would have shown it then but we didn't get to do the things we intended so I didn't blog.  The picture was taken from our balcony.

Ryde is famous for carnivals this year they had a large paper mache bull and lots of dancers.

Last Sunday was very hot so we decided to do one of our favourite walks with great views.  I got started.

However, you might notice the sea mist boiling up below.  It got so bad you could cut it with a knife, no views and it was cold and wet.  So we did something different.

This weekend we decided to try again.

Great start we could see the sea and trees.  We start this walk in Upper Ventnor which is high on the cliff path, but below you can see the Undercliff so there are two layers of cliffs.  We walked along a footpath alongside the Whitwell Road.

Much sunnier this time!  We carried on until we had to carefully cross the road at St Lawrence.  Then we were in the countryside.  Looking back I could see Ventnor and St Lawrence below us on the Undercliff.

Looking forward I could see where we were going.

Its a very pretty country walk with the sea and Undercliff to our left.

We past some great countryside views.

After coming out of a wooded path we caught our first glimps of St Catherine's Lighthouse at Niton.

Its that little white thing in the far distance.

We carried on for quite a way and carefully crossed another road at Niton, near the lighthouse, but the lighthouse is in the Undercliff so we didn't get to go too near.  However, we did get right above it later.

We carried on along the path.

The grass was very long and I couldn't always see.

Eventually we could see the sea clearly again.

The visibility was not fantastic but if you really strain your eyes you can see the west of the island, the Needles were not clearly visible today.

We could also see the view in the Undercliff.

Its a long way down but there are great countryside and beaches down there.

Well lunch is important and we stopped at the view point above Blackgang Chine.  It was full of bikers, it always is!  We had tea and our sandwiches.

The really good seats were taken but we could see West Wight from our bench.

After lunch we turned round and went back the same way, going down the bits we had climbed up and up the bits we had climbed down.  It was very hot and we did feel tired, but it is a beautiful walk.

 

 

Yes well, when baboons go for walks there has to be cake.  We stopped at St Lawrence, before the last leg of the walk.  We bought these buns at the lunch stop.  They were very nice although my person was happy that both our man person and I said they were not as good as her rock cakes.  Less tasty and not as moist!  But very nice nonetheless and definitely necessary after that walk.  We got back to the car hot and tired but we had had a lovely time.