The Bear Not-neccessarilies

I have always maintained that if I ever have to ride heroically into battle that I should like to do so on the back of a bear. With the strength of several horses, a pace that would surprise you, teeth that could hole punch through a very thick wedge of paper and paws that could deliver a near-fatal high-five, I feel that a bear would be an excellent, loyal (probably), bullet-proof (Actually probably not) and formidable ally. I can imagine staring at my enemy, watching their eyes grow wider and their faces grow paler as they see my bear approach them, not even at a canter but at an invincible and arrogant strut. They would try grovelling at my feet but I would ignore them, as if I cannot hear their desperate pleas, unmoved by their repentance and begging. I would just let Buster (my bear) carry on towards them, salivating.

Not that I have thought a great deal about it.

I quite like bears. I am intrigued by them. Their huge teeth and muscles could put the bravest of men to flight and yet their fuzzy fur and their great love for honey and all things sweet mean that they’re also the animals that we make into toys and cuddle as children. They are the Andy Murray of the Animal kingdom: aggressive and brutal but also strangely lovable. Not sure Sir Andy would make a great rug though…

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I had been waiting on the road for a good 20 minutes, I was hot, sticky, slightly headachy and for some reason that I can’t really remember, Ethan and I were not getting on particularly well that day. As in, Ethan often doesn’t like me very much but I’m usually lovely. Not that day however and I was in a hot huff. The sort of huff that meant I got annoyed when he didn’t say anything and even more annoyed if he did. And as each minute ticked slowly by as we sat by the side of the road, my huff heightened. But as is often the way, I had very little to be in a huff about.

I was spending the week in Slovenia, a country that I think I can best sum up as charming. The people were charming, friendly smiling and helpful despite the fact that barely any of them spoke English. The culture was charming, communal and caring, interested in you and accommodating of your needs. The scenery was spectacular, rolling alpine hills, ramshackle farms that bleated and clucked with life and in the distance, mountains. Our accommodation was charming, a beautiful yet plush chalet, high up in Spodnje Gorje, overlooking the idyllic Lake Bled. Even our hostess was charming (but convinced that Ethan and I were a couple…) And having spent a glorious morning exploring the crystal clear river that had gouged it’s way through the mountain over many years, I was about to do something that I had wanted to do for years: spot wild bears. But huffs are never usually rational, are they?

“Are you Harry?”

At the sound of a friendly voice, (so neither Ethan’s or mine), we turned to see a large smiling man sweating up the hill from the other side of our chalet. His shirt was stained with sweat but his face was stained with a smile (unlike Ethan’s or mine) and that softened my irritability slightly.

“Are you Harry?” The man repeated. I nodded and reached out for a handshake.

“I have been waiting,” said the man undoing all of his good work. “We are late.”

As it happened, for the 20 minutes that we had sat out by the main road, Stephan our driver had been parked on the other side of our chalet, waiting for us to spot him and appear. Following our immobile stand-off (or sit-off to be precise), he had conceded defeat and come to find us. What was brilliant about this was absolutely nothing. What should have been, and now is, something to tickle my sense of humour, instead, turned my mood so black that it was probably really good at dancing.

And it is a well known fact that insuppressible and incessant talking is the best remedy for a headache. Which was lucky, because that was exactly what Stephan had planned for our several hour long journey from the north of Slovenia to the south. And it didn’t take long to work out what Stephan’s favourite topic was.

“Where are you from? England? I have been there a few times. I love the beer! Have you tried the Slovenian beer?”

Indeed we had. But he told us about it anyway. Brand by brand.

“What about you? Wales? I haven’t been to Wales but I have been to Scotland a few times. I love the Whiskey. Scotch? Is that what it’s called? Do you like it?”

Indeed we didn’t. But he told us about it anyway.

“Have you visited *insert Slovenian town name here because I can’t remember what it was called* yet? Amazing vineyard there. The best wine in Slovenia. If you go they will give you a tour of the wine and they will let you taste the wine. Gorgeous wine there, you have to go.”

We didn’t.

On and on it went. He did of course talk about other things, his family, his favourite places in Slovenia and his recommendations for what we could do there, however I suddenly realised that he had barely mentioned bears. So much so that I began to worry that I had misread the advert and had booked a trip to watch beers…

After what felt like a hot, headachy lifetime, we pulled off the motorway, to what appeared to be the Slovenian equivalent to a Little Chef. In truth, it was rather a lot nicer that a Little Chef, and called itself a Pub, however, with my headache getting progressively worse, eating was certainly not on my agenda.

“Do you prefer red or white?” beamed Stephan before we had even got inside.

“Red,” I croaked, meaning Paracetamol. Red Wine was the last thing I wanted right now. But Stephan was not to be stopped. Clearly the expert, he told me that he could recommend an exquisite red.

To give credit where credit is due, the restaurant, or the AVIO Pub to give it it’s real name, was like the rest of Slovenia, quite charming. Doing it’s best to act as both a swanky restaurant and a roadside diner, it achieved neither but I loved it for trying. It was named AVIO because it turned out that it was next to a tiny airstrip, and seemed to have been decorated by, well lets call them an “aviation enthusiast.” Little model planes were everywhere, all of the art work featured crusty old drawings of crusty old planes. Somewhat amusingly, someone had thought it a good idea to hang a blue bike on the wall. It was neither an old bike or a new bike, just a plain bike, that seemed as confused as to why it was there as I was.

“The food here is fantastic. Have whatever you want. All of it is good!”, beamed Stephan, as if he was making us a very generous offer. This was a slightly false premise however: we had paid so much for the trip that I would have expected to have received roast bear if I had ventured to ask for it. I didn’t. But considering the fact that anything was on offer, I decided to push the boat out a little. The mistake that I made was that I pushed the boat out far too far and ordered octopus. This was a massive, eight-tentacled and difficult to swallow, mistake.

I really enjoy squid. If calamari is an option, I will pick it. I have also enjoyed eating little Octopi at a fantastic Italian restaurant local to me in Surrey. But a full grown Octopus inhabiting a salad, is one of the most unpleasant things I have ever eaten. Have you ever looked at an old car tyre, fraying at the edges, cold and slimy because of a recent drive down a muddy country lane and thought, “You know what, that would be delicious cut up into little pieces and mixed with some leaves”? It is everything that you don’t want in a meal: completely and utterly tasteless, a texture to test the gag-reflex of the most iron-stomached of our species… and salad. My pounding head was now joined in holy matrimony with my queasy stomach.

“I have bought wine,” exclaimed Stephan, heroically, obviously desperate to help my plight.

“Is a gorgeous red,” he added helpfully, “you will love it.”

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“The bears had better be worth this,” I muttered to myself as I got back into the car. My stomach felt as if it had an octopus inside it, which it did, and my head felt like it had drunk wine against it’s will, which it had. Mercifully, Stephan was a little quieter.

For a little while.

“Do you like liquor?”, he asked out of the blue.

My heart had already sunk, now it just hung limp inside my chest.

“It depends,” I croaked, meaning, “please stop talking about alcohol.”

“At the village where we watch bears, they make beautiful liquor, very smooth. It’s made of… what will you say… blueberries? Very nice, very blue. You will love it. It is homemade by our host’s wife, you must try it.”

By this time the scenery had changed. Gone were the snow-capped mountains in the distance, replaced by rugged hills, and gone were the pleasant, smooth motorways, replaced by worn, potholed roads. Just in case the octopus and the wine hadn’t quite mixed inside my stomach, our journey gave it the necessary churning that it needed in order to really ruin my day. The fact that I wasn’t sick was quite miraculous and only gritted teeth and silent pleas to the the Almighty prevented me from letting loose all over Stephan’s car.

Finally, several hours after our departure, Stephan said something that perked me up, “We are in bear country now, not far now…”

I inquired as to how likely it would be that we would see any.

“Oh very likely, he turned and grinned at me, about 90% of guests see the bears. They are very tame, they come very close.”

And with a smile and a grin, my spirits were lifted just the necessary notch to last the rest of the journey.

As we pulled into a small, dusty village, essentially a cluster of small wooden huts beside the dusty road, it felt like we were entering the wild west. Nothing stirred, except a very pregnant looking dog who watched us park up and a couple of chickens scratching around in the dirt. It was set in the middle of fields, but not the sort of flat, green field you would find in England, fields that were filled with scrubby bushes and clusters of rock. It was very quiet, lifeless even. A small girl appeared on a veranda before rushing back inside, returning shortly after accompanied by an elderly man. He beamed. I, too, was beginning to beam. As the sun began to descend, nestling just on top of the hills that looked down upon us, I didn’t need to be told that I was in bear country, I could feel it.

We were ushered into what appeared to be the local inn. It was beautiful inside, quite snug and homely, with stuffed animals looking down from the rustic, wooden walls. A large fire flickered from another room, bringing the smokey, warm embrace that I associate with Christmas. And here we were introduced to our hosts. The smiling, elderly man was apparently the chief of this little community, and he took on his duties well, pointing various things out on the walls to Ethan and I. He showed us his pistol, a beautiful little revolver, and a hunting knife. He also showed us a bear paw print, compared to that of a wolf and a lynx. Meanwhile, Stephan was talking and joking loudly with a little, elderly lady, leaning on the bar as he towered over her. This was the Chief’s wife, and she grinned at us as she peered over the counter. Another man entered, small in height, but built like a rhinoceros. Accompanied by a bald head and a face that looked like it hadn’t quite grasped the ability to smile, he had a rather fierce look about him. I must admit, I was slightly intimidated. We shook hands, I babbled about how nice it was to meet him whilst he stared at me, daring me to wet myself.

“This is your hunter,” beamed Stephan.

“Hunter?”

“Yes, he hunts bears.”

With his bare hands by looks of things.

“He will take you to the hide.”

I glanced at the grizzly man who stood opposite me, looking at me as if I had blown my nose all over his wife.

“Are you not coming too?”, I asked Stephan, almost pleading, suddenly desperate for him to stay with us.

“No, I will stay here and have a drink,” beamed Stephan. Yes that made sense.

“We go. You late.” The hunter was a man of few words. I felt that complete and immediate obedience was the only solution. Unfortunately, Stephan had not got the hint.

“Wait, you mustn’t go!” He exclaimed, rather panicked.

Maybe he had just realised that leaving two little English boys in the hands of a Slovenian bear hunter was a bad idea? Perhaps he had changed his mind and decided to come with us.

“Your liquor is just coming!”

As if on cue, the little old lady approached the bar with three little glasses, each containing a thick, purple liquid. I must admit that it looked beautiful, almost royal in colour, and silky, thick like a syrup. But in my current predicament, liquor, no matter how delicious, was simply not an option.

But I wanted to see bears. And the scary bear hunter was making it quite clear that if we were to see bears then we needed to leave imminently. There was only one thing for it. The liquor disappeared. Silky, smooth, beautiful, fruity and as potent as a pint of paint-stripper, it glided quickly down my heaving gullet. Had my stomach had any will left to live then it would have protested violently. Thankfully it didn’t, but my head… oh my head! It pulsed like a fat man’s heart on a treadmill and swam like a tortoise that had been mistaken for a turtle. Had my brain been opened and examined there and then I would not have been surprised if my surgeon had not found a fired-up military band on parade.

My head marched to the car, and the stagnant wreck of the rest of my body reluctantly followed.

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When I have previously been on safari, I have travelled by jeep or by land rover. Perhaps, if there have been lot’s of people, an open-topped minibus or a converted pickup truck has been used. I have never been on safari in a bright red, modified Ford Fiesta. So when our terrifying hunter friend ushered us into a vehicle that I associate with either elderly ladies or boy-racers with a point to prove, I was slightly perplexed. Nevertheless, our hunter friend was clearly in a hurry, we were leaving at least thirty minutes later that he had planned, and I had no desire to question his choice of vehicle.

I think the hunter was concerned that due to our tardiness, the bears may hear us as we made our way to the hide. He needn’t have worried. The way that he drove, they would have heard us if we had departed the previous week and the dust probably still hasn’t settled a year later. For the entirety of our journey along a dusty track through the scrubland, our friend insisted on sitting at 60km/h. If I had paid for a Raleigh car experience then it would have been thrilling. But we hadn’t, we had paid to watch bears, and I was fairly certain that the revving of the engine combined with the bone-shuddering clatter of the suspension as it plunged into pothole after cavernous pothole, was enough to rid the entire landscape of wildlife altogether.

But to make matters worse, as if by some miracle they could be, the man didn’t wear his seatbelt. Now, believe me, I couldn’t care less about the man’s safety. If we had crashed his head would have acted as an ample airbag and I think the car would have been in a worse state than him. If he didn’t want to be safe then that is up to him. But cars have this irritating habit of caring about one’s safety, so for every second that he drove without his seatbelt in, the car clamoured for him to put one on.

Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding.

Barely had the last ding faded had the next dim been shrieked out.

Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding.

For about 15 minutes.

My head.

Oh the throbbing.

I realised that occasionally the Ding. Ding. Ding. from the car would align with the Boom. Boom. Boom. that still reverberated around my head and it gave me a brief moment of OCD satisfaction until synchrony became a beautiful distant memory and I realised that this was my current inescapable reality.

Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding.

He could have at least plugged his belt in and sat on it to shut it up.

What with the roar of the engine, the crash of the suspension, the chiming of the car, the boom of my brain and the groan that I’m fairly sure was being emitted uncontrollably from my soul itself, I was sure that the bears would reprogram their sat-navs and take an alternative route. The squealing of old and haggard brakes were introduced to bring the cacophony to a sudden and climactic end. We were, apparently, here.

Our hunter took something from a holster on his hip, a large revolver. He checked it and returned it.

“Out.”

The aura of stepping out into a land that you know is filled with bears is a strange one. At that moment, you are both desperately hoping to see one, and desperately hoping that you won’t see one yet. The hunter, too, did not look relaxed. This, again, excited and terrified me.

He sniffed and looked around. Then he pointed to the ground.

“Bear.” He said.

In the mud beneath us was a huge paw-print, deep and clear as day. It was about the size of a cows hoof, but armed with large, sharp claws. I sucked in my breath. I was impressed.

The hunter indicated that we were to follow. We followed in silence, hushed and barely breathing. He walked slowly and cautiously, using all of his senses to assess the way ahead of him. His eyes darted around, his ears, like satellites, receiving and processing every sound. His footsteps, despite his bulk, were dainty and soft, his nose and tongue tasting the air around him for clues. This was a man who was clearly adept at finding bears. He knew what they sounded like and knew what their presence did to the woodland around them. But by his scowl, it was obvious that he felt this was wasted on two scrawny and very late English men.

After a short walk, quite disappointingly, we arrived at the hide. I say disappointing for two reasons. Firstly, because I had enjoyed the walk and the sense that we may stumble across a bear at any point. Secondly, because from the advert, the hide we were staying in was comfortable and boasting great views. It was only now that I realised that the advert may have been ever so slightly misleading.

On the top of a very ugly and garish metal pole was a shed. Not a big shed, that you may use as a summer house or to store bicycles in, but the sort of shed that you may store some logs for the fire but was essentially firewood itself. I looked at the shed. Then I looked at Ethan. Then I looked at the shed again. Then I looked at the huge bald man next to me. Then I looked back at the shed. I wasn’t sure it was big enough for the hunter, let alone the two of us.

Using his neck, or the large area of body mass that rippled where his neck used to be, the hunter said nothing verbally but spoke clearly.

“Up” and “In”.

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We were greeted by wildlife straight away, for inside the shed lived two large and annoyingly loud flies that had quite recently enjoyed a can of red bull. From the moment we entered they decided to mother us and fuss over us, landing on every available area of skin. After flapping about and attempting murder, we sat down on what appeared to be the most painful seat ever made. The sort of seat that is so ergonomically inept that the only possible explanation is that the designer was a sadistic maniac. There was lot’s of shuffling, lot’s of fidgeting, and continued flapping as the flies attempted to ingratiate us into their home.

“Those flies are so annoying,” whispered Ethan, stifling a laugh.

“Ok now shut up.” Replied the hunter bluntly.

So we did. Resisting the urge to flap and fidget, we settled down, to see what nature would bring our way.

So let me tell you about the view!

For what was beyond the window into this rugged world of bears remains somewhat of a mystery to me on account of the huge smear that that seemed to have been conveniently wiped into every corner of the pane I was staring through. It was almost as if the hunter and come before and sneezed into it, just to punish us for being late. I am jesting slightly, I could see through it, however, the entire image was smudged and bleached as a result. I was beginning to get a clearer idea of what I had paid an outrageous amount of money to do.

Clearer than my window was anyway.

Ethan had a slightly better view, but he too looked dismayed. As a keen (and may I say excellent) photographer, he had been hoping to take some intimate and striking images of any bears that we should come across. It did not take him long to realise that this was going to be highly unlikely.

We were looking down from a considerable height into what was presumably quite a beautiful little glade in the forest. The forest was heavily wooded on all sides, with a small opening probably the size of a small football pitch in the middle. But for some reason, right in the middle, somebody had decided to place another pole. There seemed to be no reason for this pole. It was not a telegraph pole, nor was it a lamp post. It was just a very ugly metal pole, very helpfully painted green, held in place with a concrete base.

“What is that?”, I whispered next to the hunter who was busy eating his fingernails.

“Is bait.” He whispered.

I must have looked utterly non-plussed.

“For bear,” he added, as if that would clarify my confusion.

I looked at the pole that must have been a good ten metres high. What sort of bears did they boast in Slovenia? Flying Ones? Former circus bears perhaps?

The hunter whipped out his phone and brought up a grainy image. I stared at it for a while before realising that the grainy image I was looking at was exactly the same as the smeared image that I had paid a huge amount of money to watch. He zoomed in on the grainy image, making it even grainier. A coeliac wouldn’t have lasted it was so grainy.

“Bear,” he pointed to a clump of darkish pixels at the bottom of the pole.

“He come to eat.”

That made sense. But the huge pole? That made no sense at all!

And the distance… On the website there had been beautiful, close up images of hulking great bears. If we were to see a bear, even with Ethan’s huge lens, any photo would have been unrecognisable. I could hear Ethan deflating next to me. I too, was struggling to be positive.

But I remembered one of my golden rules of wildlife watching: don’t do it for the photo, do it for the memory.

Buoyed that there was a ninety percent chance of seeing one of my favourite animals in the wild, and having practically forgotten about my splitting headache, I settled down and attempted to at least pretend to be comfy. I rather felt that that if I looked uncomfy, our huge Slovenian hunter friend would come and make me comfortable and I felt that, all in all, that would be a rather uncomfortable situation. And so we waited…

The glade was very quiet. Only the rustle of an affectionate breeze caressed the trees and the long luscious grass underneath us. Other than that, it was also very still. If you were to immerse yourself in a British woodland, merely sitting and waiting, you would be astonished at how lively the wild can be. A plethora of small birds will entertain you as they skip from tree to tree, branch to branch. Larger birds will announce their appearance with a crash, ungainly and brutish, not for one second concerned whether their presence is noticed. On the larger front, there will be a scurry of mammals, perhaps rabbits or rodents on the floor, squirrels in the tress. On the smaller front, if you look carefully, it will be alive with insects, on the wing, and in the vegetation around you. If you should choose to notice, then there is a host of wildlife just waiting to be enjoyed. But to my horror, and complete disbelief, this glade seemed to be utterly devoid of life. The trees did not chirrup with birdsong, nor did the grass rustle with hurried scurries. We were staring out on a most unexpected desolation.

As the sun descended slowly, inch by inch, and the twilight became all that was left of the day, so were my hopes also fading. Every now and then one of us would rub our eyes before returning to stare into the ever lengthen ing shadows of the trees. Every now and then our hunter friend would look up from his phone and sigh heavily, quite literally deflating before my eyes. Above the tree-line, against the backdrop of the distant mountains, a huge bird took to the skies, allowing its wings to snatch on to the thermals, ever rising and observing it’s vast domain below. My spirit soared with it, a reminder that there was life here. It was only a silhouette against the setting sun, but here was my phoenix. And watching as it rose higher and higher into the sunset brought a smile to my face.

And all of a sudden… movement. Distracted by the unknown eagle or vulture above me, from what must have been the farthest and most uninhabitable corner of my eye, the dart of an animal was detected. Ethan had seen it too. I looked across at our expert and dedicated guide who was sincerely and earnestly texting.

“What was that?” I asked, more hoping to grab his attention then anything else.

He stared for a while, like us scanning the grass with our eyes, scouring it for further signs of life. By this time, light was becoming a rare commodity and everything in view was in that strange phase where it is just about in colour but had almost completed it’s transition into the black and white of our night vision. Our eyes narrowed, desperately trying to focus. It was now that I realised that I had forgotten about my headache, swiftly followed by the realisation that I still had a headache and the frustration that I couldn’t choose to re-forget or indeed disremember my headache. But at least I was distracted. My head was no longer the only thing pumping, my heart had now joined it. Errr… actually I’m fairly sure my heart had been pumping the whole time, evidenced by my undeadness, however I could now feel it. There is nothing like watching wildlife for getting a heart racing and adrenaline infused into every sinew into your body. But unlike sport, when you can vent that excitement with roars of passion or cries of joy, when you are watching wildlife, it is most painfully repressed. At the moment you want to babble excitedly and jostle for a good position, the only available course of action is absolute silence and serene stillness. Whilst your interior is quivering with frantic excitement, your exterior must exude tranquility. I would almost say that it is an art. It is ultimate self-control.

Self-control goes out the window when a fox trots into view.

“Fox!” I spat, spewing out all of the pent up excitement that had built up in the moments before, punching my knee in frustration.

“Is fox,” said our hunter, helpfully pointing at the oblivious creature that was now very much in view.

I have nothing against foxes. There are people who would consider foxes to be vermin and like nothing better then to watch one get mercilessly ripped limb from limb by a pack of dogs but I am certainly not one of those people. And as it trotted around in front of us, I had to admit that it was a beautiful fox, large but sleek, bright orange and thick furred, with a beautiful white tip to its tail. It was even joined by a second one shortly after, and they explored the glade together in the last of the light. But I couldn’t help but be frustrated. If I wanted to see a fox, I could have walked 150 metres over the road from my house to where a pair of foxes have lived and bred every year for as long as I remember. I could drive through my village at midnight and catch a glimpse of about three or four in my headlights as they spend the evening drinking and smoking away from the watchful eye of their parents. Oh wait, that’s youths. Now they are vermin…

The truth was, I had spent several hundred pounds, and travelled hundreds of miles only to see an animal that occasionally frequents my garden and unsuccessfully plots to eat by pet tortoises.

As the day slipped away silently into the oblivion of night, our hunter friend sighed.

“No bear.” He muttered, shaking his head and sighing.

“No bear.”

He sighed again and then started tutting, that horrible “ts ts ts,” that is by far and away the most irritating noise that a human can emit. He sounded disappointed, let down even, as if he was telling off the glade having come across her stark and empty. But his disappointment could not have compared to the empty frustration that hung over me as I dragged myself from the hide and trudged back to the car.

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I must admit, I was less than impressed. I was less than impressed with Stephan, for making us late to the hide. I was less than impressed with the hide, it’s size, it’s distance from the bait and it’s smeary windows. I was less than impressed with the very ugly pole that would have ruined any good photo opportunity had one arisen. I was less than impressed with the huge price that we had paid to see something that I can see for free I’m my own garden. And perhaps this negativity had laid some eggs in my brain and it’s cynical and skeptical larvae were beginning to infest every thought that I had. But as we walked back to the car, and examined the bear print once again, a very dubious thought entered into my mind.

Something didn’t add up. There was a large, clear and deep bear print, just two metres from where the car was parked in some thick, sticky mud. But as I looked around, it became abundantly clear that there was not a single other. Did this bear have unbelievably long, giraffe like legs? Did it hop around as if it was on a giant pogo stick?

Or had it been placed there on the off chance that we didn’t see any bears?

In all honesty, I don’t know the answer. All I do know is that Slovenia, despite all of it’s charm, has certainly not mastered the art of bear watching yet!

As we journey back to Bled in merciful silence, pretending to sleep so that Stephan didn’t talk to me, I was hugely disappointed. But would I have it any other way?

Absolutely not!

You see, wildlife watching is thrilling and exciting, purely because it is not guaranteed. The wild is not a zoo. The animals are not enclosed not are they trained. They are simply being themselves, living the life that they were designed to live, enjoying this world as it was designed to be, free from the cares of man and civilisation. They are not at my beckon-call. Viewing them is not my right. A glimpse is a privilege, a rare insight, permitted by the animal alone, into it’s untouched world. And in a world that is becoming increasingly “touched” by the idiocy and carelessness of man, places like this, true wilderness, must be treasured and preserved.

Dejected yes, but the result will be an even greater thrill when I finally come to face to face with a bear.

This is what we paid over £300 to look at for a couple of hours