Paddington Bear Trail

We have a mini-project about Paddington Bear going on and there is, most conveniently, also a Paddington Bear Trail in London, this December. Obviously, we decided to explore this. 

The trail has fifty Paddington Bear statues at locations around London ranging from Heathrow to the East End. There are four mini-trails:

• Royal Parks
• Paddington in Paddington
• River and Historical London
• The Christmas trail

We decided to investigate Paddington in Paddington on a cold and rather wet day!

Appropriately, the first statue was on Paddington Station where the Browns found Paddington Bear. This is a classical Paddington designed by the author of the books, Michael Bond. 

Not too far from this statue is a another, not of Paddington, but of Isambard Kingdom Brunel who designed Paddington Station, and of course, much else as well.

Paddington Station also boasts a Paddington Bear shop. We managed, somehow, to avoid buying anything!

Our next stop was just opposite the station in Norfolk Square Gardens where Paddingtonscape is set.

I don't think that we were intended to follow the route that we found but we wandered through St Mary's Hospital and eventually found a footbridge over the Canal

to the next set of bears.

Brick Bear

Bearing Up

This was the children's favourite as it was fuzzy. I had difficulty getting them to stop hugging the bear to take this picture.

Futuristic Robot Bear

This section of Paddington Basin had some amazing bridges being put through their paces.

This is the Rolling Bridge. The children had been learning about polygons recently so it was interesting to see an interesting use for octogons!

Then we realised that the bridge behind the Futuristic Robotic Bear was moving.

This picture was before I realised that the bridge would move but it does show a fairly standard appearing footbridge, in the background, but then

and

This is the Fan Bridge.

If you are planning to see the bridges then Friday at noon is the time to go. We didn't realise this so the bridges were an added extra but it is definitely worth making a trip fit in with the bridges opening. 

Onto Little Venice

and more Paddington Bears.

Love, Paddington x

Texting Paddington was dwarfed by a large Christmas tree.

The Mayor of Paddington

We've just seen eight of the fifty bears, so far! According to the downloadable map, that makes us Apprentice Adventurers but we were ready for a warm house and a cup of tea. Maybe we should have added a marmalade sandwich!

If you enjoyed this post you may like to follow Delivering Grace by Google Friend Connect, G+,Facebook, Pinterest or e-mail.