We’re going on a Bear hunt … The Big Sleuth

On a Sunday morning, fuelled by breakfast at our favourite Boston Tea Party, we set off on our bear hunt. The Big Sleuth launched in Birmingham in July and is a collection of 100 model bears spread throughout the city and surrounding areas.

The trail aims to raise money for Birmingham Children’s Hospital through sales of the map and app of the trail and then by autctionning off the bears when the trail closes in September. Each bear is individually decorated by a local artist and has a plaque explaining the theme and background to the design.  You can find more about the trail and how to get involved here.

 

 

Super shiny Snowy bear by St Paul’s Cathedral is Mini’s favourite so far

We downloaded the app before we started and also bought a map from one of the outlets around Birmingham so that Mini could hold it and guide us around. She was excited about finding the bears and decided to take her own camera with her to take snaps of the bears that we found.

We started off the trail by St. Phillips cathedral and quickly clocked up 8 in close proximity around the square. On each bear is a code that you can enter into the app and it keeps a track of how many you had discovered so far.

It was a great exercise for Mini to look at the map and try to work out which way to go next to find the next bear. Some of them were in very obvious places whereas others were hidden away and required a bit more detective work to find.

That day we spent around 4 hours around Birmingham, stopping for lunch and snacks of course to keep us going. We managed to clock up 12,000 steps so it was a great way to get in some fun exercise.

So far my favourite bear has been “Window Shopping” bear because he had little windows built into him with scenes inside that you can peer into. Mini loved “Snowy” because he was super shiny.

 

Mr & Mini Mack with Window Shopping Bear

Since our day around Birmingham we have found a few more bears in other locations such as Bearwood high street, the Lickey Hills during a picnic trip and Birmingham Women’s Hosptial. So far we have found 41 bears and are hoping to go on some more adventures to find more soon, our aim is to find at least 50.

We hope you enjoy the trail and would love to hear which is your favourite bear.