A Picnic Hike

One of the teddy bears' favourite things to do is to go for a walk in the countryside, especially when the weather is as nice as it has been for a few days. Their most favourite thing to do, of course, is to eat! They love all sorts of food, not just sweeties, but also fruit and vegetables, and fish and puddings!

"Wouldn't it be great," thought Crackers, "if we could combine those two of our favourite things?"

He asked Boo what he thought of the idea. Boo was extremely interested. "What's not to like?" he asked. "How about if we plan a lovely walk, with specific stopping places where we could enjoy snack breaks and a picnic lunch?"

Crackers was intrigued. He loved to get out all their local maps and plan some interesting walks. Adding in stopping places was just an additional step in making their walks awesome. "Let's call them Picnic Hikes," he suggested, "and I'm sure all the others would like to join us."

So they asked the other bears if they would like to go for a "Picnic Hike." They were all very excited.

"What?" asked Richard. "Walking and eating - all in the same day? You betcha!"

So Crackers enlisted the aid of his friend Oscar to help him devise a route for their Picnic Hike which would include some nice places to stop and eat.

Boo decided that, whilst Crackers was sorting out the Hike side, he would try to sort out the Picnic side. It was very important that they get exactly the right sort of picnic food.

"So, what things are you considering for your Hike and your Picnic?" Scary asked Crackers and Boo.

"Well, if everyone is going on our Hike," replied Crackers, "then I need to make sure that all the little bears (who only have little legs, of course) will be able to manage.

I think I will plan our route so that it is mostly flat and that means I could look for some paths that follow streams as they are always on flat ground, otherwise they would be waterfalls!" he joked.

"And as it has been quite sunny recently, and rather warm in the afternoons, I'm going to look for a few shady spots for our stopping places. We certainly don't want to be eating our sandwiches somewhere too hot to be comfortable," he continued. "And, because we will be stopping several times, I don't want to make it a very long distance, otherwise we will never get back home before dark!"

So Crackers and Oscar got together over the maps to decide on the best paths they could follow, and the best places, preferably with a lovely view, for their stops.

"In the meantime," said Boo, "I will see what food we already have in the kitchen that will be suitable to take on a hike."

"Isn't every sort of food suitable to take on a hike?" asked Henry. "Surely we just need something to eat?"

"It's not quite that simple," replied Boo. "There are lots of things we need to take into consideration. For a start, our food will need to be able to survive travelling in our rucksacks so that means nothing that might go squishy or soggy. Plus we're going to need great flavours and hopefully food that is also good for us - so that probably rules out cream cakes and very ripe bananas!" he laughed.

"I'm going to suggest we all carry our own individual picnics with us, so that no-one is carrying too much of any one thing. That means that when we settle down to eat, we aren't all getting up and down to pick at different plates of food. We'll all have our own lunchboxes filled with exactly what we want to eat. I'm going to put out piles of food in the kitchen and everyone can come and choose whatever they want to fill up their boxes."

"What sort of things will we have to choose from?" asked Henry, suddenly worried that there wouldn't be anything he liked on the menu.

"I'm going to make some sandwiches first," replied Boo. "You can help me if you want. I think cheese and ham, peanut butter and banana, and maybe just some bread and butter which we can eat with some boiled eggs - which are especially handy because they come in their own packaging!"

So Henry helped Boo make some sandwiches. Then they added some small bags of crisps, some raw vegetables cut up into sticks with some small tubs of hummus to dip into, and some salad ingredients, together with some salt and pepper screwed up in little pieces of paper so they could all pack their own.

They also found some fresh fruit (they had strawberries and plums and apples) - not too soft and cut up into bite-sized pieces.

"We'll also need snacks!" said Henry. They found some dried fruit, raisins, sultanas, coconut strips and some different nuts like almonds and hazelnuts and walnuts. "We can make our own trail mix!" declared Henry. That would do for snack stops on the way, and they would take some nice biscuits too. They could keep them in the outside pockets of their rucksacks or in their coat pockets so that they could reach them easily without having to disturb their main picnic lunches.

"That seems like quite a lot of food," murmured Boo, "but we will be out for quite a while and it's surprising just how hungry you get when you're outdoors and hiking. Now, what have we forgotten?" he asked Henry.

"Well, there can't be much food left," laughed Henry. "I can't think what we might have missed."

"Well, we're going to need something to drink," said Boo. "All that walking is going to make us extra-thirsty. The rule of thumb is that, for every hour we are walking, we should each have 2 cups of water with us. As we are going out for maybe two to three hours, we should take 6 cups of water each. We can carry it in our water bottles. If it was very hot weather we would need more water, and we would probably want to carry it in a vacuum flask to keep it cool.

As it is, I think we should take some of the ice-packs out of the freezer and put one in the bottom of everyone's lunchbox to keep their food cool."

"Gosh, that's an awful lot of things to think about," said Henry. "But I'm very glad we'll be so well prepared.

"Right," Boo continued, "let's get everyone in here in turn with their lunchboxes and water bottles and make sure everyone takes enough to feed themselves for a few hours of walking."

Each teddy bear filled their rucksacks with food and drink, making sure that they would be able to carry it all, at least for the first hour, as after that the weight would surely be going down fast! They also each carried a small bag for rubbish so they could bring it back home, and a towel for wiping their paws.

Crackers and Oscar had finished their route planning, all the bears had rucksacks full of food and water, and the sun was shining brightly as they set off on a wonderful Picnic Hike!

Perhaps you could arrange to go on a hike too, and take a picnic with you. Even a very short walk seems so much better if you know that there will be lovely food to eat and nice places to eat it on the way. Enjoy!