Tardy Bears Picnic

by Alan Cole · Sunday, July 18th, 2010

After our meeting of the Ceredigion Moth Group on Saturday morning Morgan and I headed back down to sea level and collected Anna and a friend of Morgan’s called Lotti and we all headed off to the RSPB reserve at Ynyshir where we were booked in for a Teddy Bears Picnic – or as it should have been called a ‘Tardy Bears Picnic’ – D’you see what I’ve done there!

We got there about 10 minutes early as usual as the picnic was due to start at 11.30am There was no one else with teddy bears there so it looked as though it was going to be a quiet picnic, perhaps people had been put off by the grey weather. We had a chat with the wardens whilst Morgan and Lotti did some colouring and they said that 3 other groups of people had phoned that morning and booked so they should be there and they knew what the weather was like when they phone so we shouldn’t be on our own.

These other people did turn up in the and, but not until 11:50am, 20 minutes after we were supposed to have set off on the picnic, so in the end we didn’t get going until midday. Not a huge problem but the picnic was due to finish at 1pm and that’s what time we had planned to leave as Lotti had to get back to go horse-riding. So, in the end, everything was running late thanks to the late people and we had to leave at 1pm whilst the picnic was still ongoing. We missed out on the scavenger hunt on the way back through the woods despite being the only people who got there on time.

What is wrong with people, why can’t they be on time, and why when they are late do they not even acknowledge it. It’s just rude, but seems standard practise for many people these days. It annoys me and invariably it is those that are on time that end up missing out.

Anyway, apart from that we had fun. The children found bears on their way to the hide and stuck colourful things they found in the woods onto a sticky rainbow. Once at the hide they did colouring and dot-to-dots before having a story and a picnic. Morgan spotted a Buff-Tip moth on the way there too which was pretty good and I think he impressed the warden by seeing it and by knowing what it was!

There was supposed to be a scavenger hunt on the way back to the visitor centre but we missed out on that – We do have the sheets though so can do it some other time on our own.

I forgot to take any photos though.