Bear Necessities

Lincoln done. Time to move on. To Sheffield.

This year the city is running the Bears Of Sheffield trail, 61 bears spread far and wide. This is the second trail I will have done in Sheffield following on from the Herd Of Sheffield back in 2016. Like last time the trail isn’t confined to the city centre, there are many sculptures on the outskirts – some where they were before and some new locations.

Having spent a couple of days doing the previous trail I knew that I would have to drive to the remote locations if I wanted to see them all, so after a pleasant cross country drive I started to work in an outer loop of the city picking up a bear here, and a couple there. One of the things that annoys me about these trails is that a degree of local knowledge is assumed and that is ok to some extent, locals are the most likely to be doing the trail, but there are those of us who enjoy travelling to do them and it would be really useful if the locations on maps gave a bit more detail.

Although distances weren’t great between bears it was still a time consuming exercise, although I was particularly pleased to clear the 4 Meadowhall bears in under 15 minutes. It also meant that we didn’t arrive at our city centre hotel until mid-afternoon, and it wasn’t until nearly 4 when I finally hit the streets. As with Lincoln the fact that I had done a trail here before gave me some insight as to where the locations were, but even so I knew that this one was going to be hard work.

I was able to pursue a fairly logical circular route, starting by heading out to the extremities before slowly spiralling in to the centre where the greatest concentration is. There followed a gruelling 4 hour walk in warm temperatures and battling with the constant ups and downs of this very hilly city. By the time I got back to the hotel my total stood at 56 of the 61 with one bear missing off it’s plinth and the remaining 4 deemed to be too far out as to comfortably accommodate on the day. These 4 could be picked up the next day before we started the drive to our next destination.

A final total of 60/61 and with just under 17km walked in the heat I slept very well indeed!