Friends

This week has been an exciting one for us with meeting friends and having the pleasure of their company on our island. It started on Saturday when two girls who were doing a 26 mile sponsored walk on the island on Sunday came to stay the night to get an early start. We had dinner, watch Eurovision and had fun and thank you to them for doing a walk for the Earl Mountbatten Hospice on our island we are very grateful.

On Sunday morning after they had gone we quickly changed the beds in the spare room for the arrival of a VIP guest, none other than @hi_im_monkey (Monkey) who Leroy and Henry visited in Dallas last month. Although we have known him for nearly 10 years I had never met him in the fur before (or terrycloth in his case) so I greeted him with a big hug! to welcome him to our home.

On Monday Leroy took him out and about around our town of Ryde. First them went for a walk to Quarr Abbey but stopped off on the way to look at Holy Cross Church in Binstead which is a 13th century church. They both wanted to look at the saxon carving above the gate.

It is small like they are and very high up so they had to be held up to be pictured with. I think it looks about like them but without the bow tie or surfy hoody!

The grave yard of the church has some interesting old graves including smugglers so they thought they would have a look at some of them. They were fascinated by this very old one although the writing was too worn away to be able to read it clearly so we don't know who it was.

They sat very quietly and respectfully and thought about all the people buried in the very old grave yard.

They did take Monkey into the church to look around but they could not take pictures there as it was a very holy place. Next they set off on their walk again to get to Quarr Abbey.

Quarr Abbey was originally founded in 1132 but was destroyed in the disolution of monastries in England when Henry VIII closed the monastries and destroyed the buildings. The first thing we showed Monkey was what is left of the ruins of the old monastry at Quarr. Henry and Monkey had their picture taken with the ruins behind them.

Looks like Henry VIII did a pretty good job of destroying it doesn't it!

When they arrived at the new abbey, built between 1907 and 1910, the first thing they saw was the piglets on the abbey farm. Some of them came to talk to them.

They were very sweet piggies and lots of them!

The abbey's style is moorish expressionist and it is a very handsome building. They took Monkey around the abbey but again couldn't take pictures because it is holy. They had dinner at the abbey but apparently it was so yummy they forgot to take pictures! Trust Leroy feeding his face!

The Isle of Wight is famous for sailing but they were a little surprised to find a boat in the abbey garden as there was no water! Leroy and Henry thought it would be a good opportunity to show Monkey the ropes though and that is exactly what they did.

After that they travelled back home by bus and wanted to take Monkey on the chocolate tour of Ryde on the way home. The Chocolate Apothecary on the seafront was so crowded they couldn't breath let alone take pictures. Straw Bonnet in Union Street was closed so they couldn't go and look at their chocolates but Thorntons didn't let them down. They had tea there and look what Monkey and Henry got up to while they were there!

I'm sure Monkey is cuddling those chocolates! Well wouldn't you!!

On Wednesday it was my turn to get out and about with friends. Henry (@henryandfriends) came over to see us and go for lunch. I took Snowdrop who was sent to me by @RetteKaninchen sent, with me so she could meet Henry. It looks as though they got on well!

We went to Olivos in Union Street which @MrsFiddlesticks and @Tim_Kirby liked when they visited the island. I had a pizza I needed to check it out to see how they made theirs so I had a good look at it first to get their trade secrets.

I think it is different to mine by just as nice. I met Henry's new brothers Marmite and Aubyl for the first time. Marmite likes pizza so we shared it because it was very big for us at lunchtime.

Marmite and I did not drink that class of wine you can see behind him that was somebody else's honestly!! I don't think we ate much of the salad either pizza was enough for us.

Then it came to pudding time, they didn't have a banana split but they had a very suitable pudding for me with bananas, banoffe pie is a great pudding for baboons! Snowdrop has got used to bananas since she came here so she and Henry shared it with me. Marmite and Abuyl shared a different pudding with a waffle that looked nice as well.

So you can see that we have had a great week of friends this week and that is fantastic cos what is better than friends. Leroy and Henry also had a great time meeting @pinkbunny, who is lovely, last month so all in all we've had a great time with friends lately. I hope we meet more of you in future and see some of you that we have met before again, but even if Leroy or I don't meet you you are all our friends and that makes us very happy!

Leroy in Kent

I have been travelling again and Kolo has kindly let me use his blog again to tell you about my adventures. This time I stayed in England even though I had to go on a boat to get there, I visited Kent in the south east of England. It was very windy there so I had to be careful having pictures taken to make sure I did get blown away and sometimes my person had to hold onto me to stop me being blow away as I am quite small and light. We were not surprised to see there was a wind farm off the coast but its not usually as bad as it was this weekend.

We visited Broadstairs which is a nice little seaside town in Kent and did some travelling. This is what Broadstairs looks like and I recommend it to anyone especially when the wind dies down.

That is quite a lot of pictures of Broadstairs but it is very pretty so I wanted you to see it.

We stay in a hotel, last time we were in a hotel you saw us looking at the Pacific Ocean out of the window, this time it is the English Channel you can see behind us and France is not far away.

One of the most important places in Broadstairs is Morelli's its a big ice cream parlour and it has not changed since the 1950's. Of course we had to go there it was too windy outside but this is what it looks like so if you ever visit Broadstairs you will be sure to go there.

Henry and I found a very big ice cream there, here it is.

I think between all us anipals we could managed to eat that no worries!

Then it was lunchtime and we looked for somewhere for lunch. We discovered that one of our friends has a resturant in Broadstairs.

Unfortunately Marley (@marleyterrier) must have been attending the Royal Wedding because it was closed so we had to go back to Morelli's and have an ice cream instead.

In the afternoon we went to visit Joss Bay because Jazzy (@jazzydacat) asked us to say hello to Joss Bay. It was a good job we did go because they needed us to do lifeguarding like we did in LA what a good job we were there to help them out.

It was very windy with some big waves so we had to do quite a lot of rescues. We were glad of our Bearmani hoodies that Snuffy (@snuffynorton) made as it was breezy.

On the way back from Joss bay we stopped off to look at North Forelands lighthouse that helps ships and ferries to navigate the English Channel between England and France it is very beautiful there.

Charles Dickens lived at Broadstairs for a while and he owned this house, do you recognise the book title. I think somebody called it that later because Dickens lived there, actually he wrote Barnaby Rudge while he was there not Bleak House. It was very windy and I had to enlist help to have photos taken.

Here you can see Mr Dickens. I had to be held up here the wind was fierce and there was a large and not very friendly dog on the other side of the wall I couldn't wait to get away. He was nothing like our anipals at all.

On Saturday we went to Ramsgate where it was windy again. I found a little church on the harbour dedicated to sailors and to "smack boys". Don't get the wrong idea about this smack boys, they were apprentices on fishing boats known as fishing smacks.

I needed help again because of the strong wind.

On Sunday we went walking the other way back past Joss Bay where they asked us to be lifeguards again but we had other things to do. We thought we would visit our friends @WallasEKatt and @Isa_Gold because they live in Australia and that is where we thought we were, actually we have a few anipal friends there but we couldn't find any of their houses. I wonder why!!

Some naughty people had done graffiti on the sign and we think that was covering the directions to our friends houses. Botany Bay is in Australia isn't it??? There were certainly big surf waves there so it must have been Australia mustn't it??

On Monday we started making our way to Deal where we were visiting Wenda and Edward. On the way we stopped at a place that our friend Arf (@monkeysbrother) would like cos it has a big famous golf course and there will be a big important tournament there this year. Its called Sandwich which sounds funny but its a town not our dinner.

It is a very historic place and I'm going to put some more pictures of it here because it is so old and beautiful.

This is what the streets and like in Sandwich old and beautiful and very narrow it is a lovely place. Look at this house below it was built in 1517 and somebody is still living there. Imagine that.

Finally we reached Deal. We started by visiting Deal castle which was built to protect us against the French, they had some great cannon there. There are quite a lot of castles on that stretch of coast built to protect us from the French. Shame really I like the French they invented croissants and who can complain about that?

While we were in Deal we met a very important person, she is smaller than I thought! She had had a very busy weekend so maybe she had shrunk a bit, she seemed very happy to see a couple of British lions anyway.

Well acutally she was not the most important person we met in Deal (I hope that is not treason)! We met Wenda and Edward who loved our clothes and were very happy to see us (now you know why we had to go in the washing machine last weekend)!

You can see they made quite a fuss of us, we like being made a fuss of so that was fine. We had a lovely lunch with them and then we set off for home, a long car journey and then the boat back to the Isle of Wight. We had a great trip and we are very lucky to get to go the the USA and Kent in one month. We have not got any more travel plans for a while but we will let you know when we are off roving again.

Thank you for reading our story.

Clothes by Bearmain (@Snuffy_Norton)

Leroy's Adventures Part 2 - LA

We had to get up at 4 am to get the plane for LA so you can imagine how hungry we were by the time we got there, so guess what we did first, yes you are right we headed for Hollywood Swingers cafe for a big breakfast.

We had really yummy French toast, this took quite a bit of eating but we were hungry so we managed OK, it was yummy as you can see.

One of the best things we did in LA was meeting Pink Bunny (@pinkbunnyr) she is so lovely. We went to the House of Pies in LA which sold yummy pies but the best thing was meeting Pink Bunny I recommend that everyone meets Pink Bunny she is awesome and Gray as well!Pink Bunny was so welcoming and she gave us some lovely bunny chocolate. Henry and I have not eaten the bunnies as they look so nice it seems wrong to eat them somehow.

The next morning I went on a special expedition to look for something that I knew would make a friend of ours happy. Our dear Mookie (@Schnille)'s mum Sandra loves Charlie Chaplin so I went to look for his star on the Hollywood walk of fame so that she could see it. I found something else that she would like too. Look who I met.

I said hello from Sandra I knew she would want me to.

Then we moved on to our new hotel they upgraded us twice and we had such a fantastic room you could live there for ever I took loads of pictures but I will try to keep the number on here manageable.

All of the rooms had great views this was the view of Santa Monica beach from Monkey's room it was amazing we had a sitting room, kitchen, two bedrooms (Henry and I shared) and two bathrooms as well as a massive bath in Monkey's room!!




We went for a walk along Santa Monica beach and look what we found, its the end of Route 66, we found the sign!

Unfortunately I couldn't rent a Harley in my size but hey I was there!

I popped in for a visit to Hollywood I think you can just make out the famous sign behind me. Lotgs of movie contracts were offered but I said no, I'm not really a acting lion and I don't court that kind of fame.

The next morning Henry and I received an emergency telephone call, two of the lifeguards on Santa Monica beach had not turned up for work so they asked us to substitute of course we were happy to help out.

Thank goodness Snuffy made us the board shorts we needed them here we are looking out at the Pacific Ocean to see if anyone needs saving.

Well apart from a visit to David Beckham (I'm not allowed to talk about that), that concluded our visit to LA and we flew back to Dallas to have more fun there.


I hope you have enjoyed my journeys I certainly did and my brother Henry has got the travel bug. We are jet lagged now but would do it all again any time.


Thank you Monkey for having us to visit and taking us to interesting places and thank you Pink Bunny and Gray for meeting us and giving us such a lovely time in your lovely city.

Leroy's Adventure Part 1 - Texas

Kolo very kindly said I could use his blog to tell the tales of my travels and show you the pictures. I will be doing it in two installments as we have so many pictures. I thought I would start with Texas as we arrived there and then do LA next. Thank you Kolo for letting me use your blog. We had no doubt we were in the US when we saw the stars and bars hanging up everywhere. Needless to say we had to take pictures of each other with the flag.

First my brother Henry took a picture of me and then I took one of him just to prove to oursleves we were in the US and also to introduce my little brother (or bother) to you. This is Henry in this picture.

We just love our Bearmani holiday outfits that Snuffy made.

Then we had to work out what state we were in as we knew we were going to Texas and California but we needed clues as to where we had arrived as Henry and I have never been very far before this was a confusing experience so we started looking for clues.

Our friend Monkey (@hi_im_monkey) met us at the airport and took us for tea. We know that Monkey lives in Dallas but we also know he is a traveller so that was not too much of a clue and the tea shop seemed very English. Its very nice its called the Culture Cup (theculturecup.com). We had coffee which made us seem like the Americans as Monkey, who is American, had tea. But don't we look American in our outfits. We needed more clues to decided which state we were in.

Ah now here is a clue this car has a Texan number plate it says Texas, shows a cowboy and says its the Loan Star State. Agh but cars can drive anywhere is this enough of a clue?

Ah now here was something more helpful, a yellow rose, could this be the famous yellow rose of Texas. I was beginning to feel confident that we were in Texas.

Oh now here is a big clue, the Texas Longhorns shop we know they are a Texan team so I can't imagine they would have a shop in another state. Now I'm feeling more confident.

Oh now here is a big clue what about this Texas Barbecue resturant. Well obviously we wouldn't eat there as we are vegetarians but it does look Texan doesn't it. By this time I was beginning to feel that this was definitely Texas. I should have taken more notice of what airport we landed in really but I was too excited.

Oh by now I was certain we were in Texas look at this diner seat at Norma's Diner, now that is the Texan flag isn't it. By this time I knew we were in Texas where else could we be?

Ah yes we knew we were in Texas when we saw our friend Betty she lives in Texas and here she is welcoming us to Texas. Right this is Texas Henry now we can be sure.

When you are in the USA you need to visit a soda fountain so we visited this one at Highland Park Dallas, it is very traditional and is the home of the best milk shake in Dallas. We had grilled cheese as we know that is a US delicacy and 12 April 2011 was national grilled cheese day in the US so what else would you eat?

Can you think of a better place than this to have a soda and a grilled cheese sandwich? I certainly can't.

So we were in Texas and we had a great adventure there, but our next adventure was to go to LA to meet our friend @pinkbunnyr. We were very excited and here with are with Monkey at Dallas Fort Worth Airport waiting for a plane to take us to LA to meet her. We were very excited as you can see. I will show my pictures of me, Henry and Monkey in LA in my next blog tomorrow (I hope) and you can see pictures of us meeting Pink Bunny, she is so lovely and we had a fantastic time with her. But that story is for another day.