Julie | iamapolarbear
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Julie | iamapolarbear
@polarbearjulie.bsky.social
230 followers 46 following 160 posts
Travel, adventure & wellness blogger, fan of hot water, kayaking, archery & fencing instructor
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polarbearjulie.bsky.social
The new leader Adventure badges are finally out! A few weeks ago, I took the Ranger ones (top row) and messed around with the colours to create my vision of what the incoming leader ones might look like (middle row). Take a look - I got pretty close! (the real thing is the bottom row)
Three rows of Adventure badges, for Height, Land, Water, Sport and Snow. The top row, with pink borders and a purple band containing the trefoil at the bottom, are for Rangers. The middle row is where I took the Ranger badges and tried out the Girlguiding general branding colours to create a mockup of what the leader versions might look like. The bottom row is the real set of leader badges. Sport is pretty much spot-on, exactly the same mustard yellow on the top and green at the bottom and there's the same yellow dotted across most of them, although I kept it as a bit more of an accent on mine. The person on the Snow badge is wearing the same yellow jacket that I put on mine too. I put too much navy on some of them and not enough of that green but otherwise, they were close enough that I was almost disappointed before I realised the ones they were too similar too were the ones I'd invented and not the ones that already existed.
May 14, 2025 at 12:00 PM
polarbearjulie.bsky.social
Aw, the Scouts have fooled us with a Chocolate badge… which is something the Guides had 20 years ago as both interest badge and patrol GFI challenge, now both discontinued under the new programme. We once did them both in the same term. Girls love it. Parents are a bit more dubious.
The mid-2000s Guide Chocolate interest badge, showing a box of chocolates wrapped in ribbon on a beige background with a Trefoil logo above it The mid-2000s Guide Go For It Chocolate patrol activity pack badge, where a chunk of chocolate is melting across the Go For It logo and Trefoil A circular Scout badge with a fleur-de-lis in the middle that looks like it’s made out of nice shiny chocolate
April 1, 2025 at 2:29 PM
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The M*il is reporting that an eruption has started in Iceland. There's a massive earthquake swarm & deformation shows a lot of magma moving around but it's all underground at the moment. It might well pop up and start erupting today but then volcanoes are unpredictable and it might go back to sleep.
A picture of Meradalir erupting in the summer of 2022. It's a very small black volcano crater erupting small fountains of yellow and orange fire in a small grey-green valley, seen from the hillside slightly above the level of the volcano, giving you a good view into the centre of the crater. There's some blueish smoke coming off the volcano and you can see bright orange as the liquid lava runs down the small crater and onto the lava field below.
April 1, 2025 at 8:48 AM
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I've got a picture of me aged 20 lying on that patch of grass, looking up at the towers, channelling Scrubs' My Old Lady's advice ("What about your list? How many of those things have you done? For that matter, how many times have you sat in the grass and done nothing, hm?")
Me aged 20 in a red t-shirt, lying in the grass with my arm over my head, knocking my glasses wonky. The towers of the cathedral upside down, taken from a position lying on the grass below them.
March 25, 2025 at 4:58 PM
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Ok, I'm turning that off because a flood of posts just because I added a UK tag is incredibly annoying. I went to Legoland with my Rangers yesterday, have that instead. It was a really long day but it reminded me why I like Rangers.
March 24, 2025 at 1:03 PM
polarbearjulie.bsky.social
Well, I'm not entirely surprised it skews southern - bit surprised it dodges London when my dad's side of the family were Londoners. In the second is my mum's name. We've done some family research and there's no Welsh in there...
A UK heatmap from https://named.publicprofiler.org/ showing what regions my surname is most popular in. It's definitely more popular from the south west up to just above the east midlands but brightest in the Devon, Dorset, Somerset & Wiltshire areas. The same map for my mum's surname, showing it almost exclusively in Wales and brightest in north Wales - a bit odd considering we haven't found any Welsh in the family tree.
March 13, 2025 at 2:36 PM
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I don't love the implied suggestion that we shouldn't be enjoying it while it lasts just because people think it might not last. We don't get much sun, I'm going out in it
Just showing off that I kayaked across London one of those sunny days.
March 13, 2025 at 10:59 AM
polarbearjulie.bsky.social
I was hoping for something that tells the selectors I'd be a great person to help lead a trip, not that I'd be a person who's going to be difficult about food on any potential trip. Item 1 is going to be my book - travel, writing & adventure in one! Item 2 is harder but I've still got a month.
Me in December 2013 in mostly black waterproof clothes and a blue helmet, covered in snow, standing outside a lava cave on a background of snow where the sky is the same colour as the land.
March 13, 2025 at 10:39 AM
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I've been to Schaffhausen but it was back in 2006 and I didn't do much except the waterfalls - I think I had a minor problem with the train and arrived later than planned. It's quite pretty and they're especially proud of their oriole windows, IIRC.
February 10, 2025 at 4:46 PM
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Next month is Thinking Day and I'm going to Pax Lodge for it. Which neckerchief?
1) Pax Lodge
2) Local division
3) Region
4) Trefoil Guild
Me in my Guide hoodie and badge tab with my hair in plaits. I'm wearing a teal-green neckerchief tied in a friendship knot. It's much shorter than the other neckerchiefs, so it's the only one where you can see what the friendship knot looks like and what the neckerchief looks like when there's one tied in it. This is the Pax Lodge neckerchief, which has the Pax Lodge wordmark and bus logo in yellow visible among its twists and WAGGGS (World Association of Girl Guides & Girl Scouts) in white. Same uniform, this time the neckerchief is bright red with a broad white border and I'm wearing it with a woggle (navy blue, Brownsea Island) because I'm not sure the leader who looks after these neckerchiefs would approve of the creases a friendship knot would make in it. This is my local division one and usually we only wear them for Remembrance Parade. The neckerchief this time is the region one. It's deep hot pink with light blue and white double border and I'm wearing it with a friendship knot. The neckerchief is so long that the knot has slipped out of the bottom of the photo. This is the Trefoil Guild neckerchief, bright red with a deep gold broad border, also worn with a friendship knot off the bottom of the picture. This one I'm tempted by because Trefoil Guild is Guiding for adults and for me, it represents al the things I do in Guiding without the children.
January 29, 2025 at 2:27 PM
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Plans for today: bath, walk to pool, swim, pack,food shopping, go play Rebel Taskmaster!
Me swimming towards the camera wearing a bright pink rubber swimming cap because I'm in the swimming pool at Géllert Baths in Budapest, where it's unhygienic to have uncovered hair in a swimming pool but fine in a thermal pool. The water is vivid blue, lit by the sun coming through the glass roof and surrounded by pale brown stone Art Nouveau double pillars supporting the first floor which has little balconies all around so you can look down over the pool.
January 24, 2025 at 10:37 AM
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And these are probably the worst 4. It was a 36 exposure film and I've got 22 pictures, which means that actually, I didn't even receive the 14 worst. ISO 400 maybe not the best choice for Iceland in December?
A very grey picture in which you can just make out two tour buses with a crane behind them. The greyest picture of them all, with a rectangle filled with irregular vaguely-rectangular shapes to the left. This is actually Harpa, the concert hall on Reykjavik sea front and I presume Esja should be visible to the right of it, although it's not. A dark and grey enough city scene from Reykjavik that I can't even figure out where or what it's supposed to be. A very grey selfie in one of the hot pools at Hvammsvik.
January 21, 2025 at 10:03 AM
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I have been so patiently waiting for my black & white film photos from Iceland to come back. It's taken four weeks and... they're grey. I think these 4 are the best of a bad bunch.
Reykjavik's Hallgrimskirkja in grainy greyscale, silhouetted against a lighter grey sky. One of the hot pools at Hvammsvik, in shades of grey, against a grey snow-covered mountain. A meadow of snow stretching away to the mountains in the distance, with a bit of lava path bare up close. The digital version of this photo is so clean and bright it's almost overexposed but the film version is dingy grey. A view across Reykjavik from Hallgrimskirkja's tower. Mostly everything is grey but there's an interesting bright white light reflecting off the top of the Esja volcano range on the other side of the bay.
January 21, 2025 at 10:03 AM
polarbearjulie.bsky.social
And the ink - Catherine had the pan of alder ink half-finished and forgotten about and a jar of oak gall ink in the fridge, so we boiled up the alder to a satisfying colour and then did a little drawing with it.
Two pieces of test fabric dipped in the boiling ink to see if it was the right colour yet. One is a fairly saturated mustard-yellow at one end but a lighter one at the other, and the other piece has an even more saturated colour at one end but isn't dipped at the other. A little jar of oak gall ink with a pink glass swirl dip pen and the green plastic toothbrush holder it lives in for its own protection. The test fabric dry this morning lying next to the finished ink in a jam jar. A sketch of a flower with a shadow under it and little poem by me: "This is a flower; But I am not very good at drawing; Even with a special pen". The darker ink done with the very fine glass pen is oak gall, the lighter yellowy ink clearly done with a much bigger paint brush is the alder ink.
January 20, 2025 at 11:38 AM
polarbearjulie.bsky.social
On paper, using a base of iron nails in vinegar, diluted and painted onto strips of paper to give it all a purplish colour. Then you lay down your leaves and bits of onion skin (not cut into stars), wrap around tins tightly and boil.
Strips of paper, little piles of strawberry & bramble leaves and pieces of onion skin, mostly offcuts from making stars and nothing in a particularly pleasing shape. The thicker piece of paper still wet from being boiled. It has three pretty perfect outlines of the big strawberry leaves I put on there plus lots of darker random shapes where I laid bits of onion skin on it. Actually, on inspection of the dried articles, which don't match this one, this is Catherine's piece of art rather than mine, which is why the leaves have been done so nicely. Both pieces of paper dry this morning. The one on the right has lines from the tin can as well as a good leaf pattern. The one on the left has a bigger, rounder but less detailed leaf pattern on it.
January 20, 2025 at 11:38 AM
polarbearjulie.bsky.social
We dyed some leftover brushed cotton with onion skins - cut them into stars to make them pretty, place on the fabric, fold over, wrap very tightly around sticks and then boil for up to an hour. Result: yellowy-orange stars!
A piece of cotton torn roughly into a long rectangle, covered with stars cut imperfectly by hand out of a piece of onion skin. Two sticks wrapped tightly with the pieces of cotton and boiled, with the onion star prints just about visible. There are also two tin cans wrapped similarly but with paper. Next to them is a jar of alder ink cooling before we can put the lid on - it's what was in the pan in the previous post. The fabric dried and unfolded to reveal yellowy-orange stars printed all over it. They've bled a little but it still looks great - all this colour from the skins of onions!
January 20, 2025 at 11:38 AM
polarbearjulie.bsky.social
Yesterday I went to see my friend Catherine who is an artist and something of a hedge witch to learn about natural dyes and inks in her incredible witch's workshop of a kitchen - it's full of handmade mugs and spoons and baskets of mysterious things plus it's also a family kitchen. Amazing place.
An elderly saucepan whose edges curve inwards rather than outwards, full of a dark liquid (alder ink) on the Aga's hottest hot plate. I didn't take any photos of the actual kitchen so take this picture of the Aga as representation of what this kitchen is like.
January 20, 2025 at 11:38 AM
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4) Old Harry Rocks, ditto about the textbooks - coastal erosion in action, creating caves, arches, stacks and stumps.
Old Harry Rocks as seen from a kayak a couple of hundred metres away. It’s a headland severed from the actual headland as a series of stacks with arches and caves in it. Me standing on the beach at the base of Old Harry Rocks at low tide. There’s an arch behind me and you can see more stacks through it. A slightly unusual view of Old Harry from behind featuring me in a sea kayak paddling through it.
January 19, 2025 at 11:29 PM
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3) Durdle Door, not the name of a wizard - a textbook example (literally, check any GSCE geography book and it’ll be there) of a coastal erosion creating an arch. Popular for swimming through & jumping off.
Durdle Door seen from the mainland coast just a little higher than it. It’s a limestone arch sticking out into the sea perpendicular to the coastline. A shingle beach meets it at land end. Jet skiers skiing through Durdle Door as seen from the beach.
January 19, 2025 at 11:29 PM
polarbearjulie.bsky.social
2) Stair Hole on the back of Lulworth’s western side, a lovely example of folded limestone strata but generally overlooked by the grockles, probably for its lack of sunbathable beach.
Looking down on a tiny cove separated from the sea by a crumple of rock. Stair Hole from the other end, a lot less like a cove and more like a puddle behind a messy bit of low cliff from this angle. Close-up of the limestone strata twisted up, down and sideways.
January 19, 2025 at 11:29 PM
polarbearjulie.bsky.social
As well as the Cove, the Lulworth Estate owns probably most of the village where Mel apparently lives, and Lulworth Castle, which is probably best known for Camp Bestival. I once abseiled off it.
Lulworth Castle, a square off-white castle with a round four-storey tower in each corner. Me, many years ago, abseiling off one of the towers.
January 19, 2025 at 11:29 PM
polarbearjulie.bsky.social
Quick thread on some of the most famous features on Dorset’s Jurassic coastline for @mredbyrne.bsky.social

1) Lulworth Cove, an almost perfect circular bay packed with grockles (Dorset for tourists; very uncomplimentary) from April to September, with extortionate & enormous car park.
Panoramic view of Lulworth Cove, a fairly perfect circular bay with a small opening on the south side, below a chalk cliff. Lulworth Cove half hidden behind a nice round hill. In front of the cove is a large car park and in summer, most of the hill I’m walking up in the picture turns into overflow parking. The car park was a birthday present to a member of the Weld family who own the Lulworth Estate and Castle.
January 19, 2025 at 11:29 PM
polarbearjulie.bsky.social
Last night I went to a Candelight Concert in the Netley Hospital Chapel where a string quartet played a tribute to Taylor Swift by candlelight. You know which song adapts best to strings? Shake It Off. Not Folklore, not even the early guitar-driven stuff. Shake It Off.
Many (fake, electric) candles of various sizes but all thick church-style laid out at the front of the church. There are no lights in the room except the one over the fire escape, so the whole place is glowing a pale yellow. Admittedly, on my laptop screen this is more off-white and yellow-green but it looks better on my phone screen, more golden. A selfie in the dark, lit only by candles. They're below me on a table, illuminating my face and you can see the ones at the front of the church behind me. I'm wearing my Eras t-shirt (the black one with all the Eras in colour on the front) and a blue-green sequin 1989 tour-style jacket. A string quarter half-hidden by the three rows of people in front of me, lit by the white LEDs over their music stands and hundreds of candles laid out in front of them. Me in the dining room this morning showing off my outfit from last night - the blue-green sequin jacket paired with a purple metallic miniskirt, leggings (for warmth and because the skirt is a bit short for comfort) and silver glitter plimsolls. As Taylor says, "I make the whole place shimmer".
January 18, 2025 at 11:35 AM
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Here it is 2 years ago on a sunny day which turned very suddenly to snow. I fell in love with Hvammsvík that day, feared I wouldn't love it so much on a return visit - and I did! This is my favourite hot spring in Iceland by a long way!
I think this is pool 9 on a slightly less snowy day in February 2023 with blue sky over the pool and the fjord. Pool 4, with the corrugated iron building on the left and the low winter sun shining on its water. Half an hour later in pool 10 with the background obliterated by a grey cloud and snow falling on me. I'm still wearing my sunglasses because it's too cold and I'm too lazy to go back into the changing rooms to fetch my real glasses.
January 14, 2025 at 12:53 PM
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And because this is Iceland, it has a swim-up bar. But because Hvammsvík has 8 pools, you have to run to the correct pool for it first - the one on your right as you come out of the changing rooms, the one hidden round the side of the building. Paddle up to window, request drink, pay with wristband.
Me in pool 10 with a large plastic wine glass full of "Christmas drink" - malt & Egil's Appelsin, an Icelandic fizzy orange drink. Ignore me, look at the building behind me. I managed to take a selfie and still get it with my eyes closed. Anyway, this is pool 4 where you can paddle up to the window, request a drink and pay for it with your electronic wristband. I'm still holding the Christmas drink here but I've only just received it and it's a lot more full than it was in the previous picture.
January 14, 2025 at 12:53 PM