In September 2023 our humans were going to Torquay in Devon in southern England to attend the annual festival of the world famous writer Agatha Christie. Roger felt it was about time we finally attended this festival. After all, Roger was a great writer himself and he was keen to meet up with other famous writers.

We stayed at the Court Prior. It was located near the top of a hill, sort of between down town Torquay and the festival venue.

Torquay, September 2023

Court Prior was a lovely B&B and our humans booked a lovely room with a 4 poster bed.

Our photgrapher was hoping to get some good shoots of us at the festival. Our lady human was more concerned with their reputation and believed it would be best to do the shooting very early before the crowd arrived...

Torquay, September 2023

There was a lovely lounge where we could sit and read and chat and the likes. Roger was really excited. He was designing sheets and working on his presentation on "Great Bears in Literature". Now, he would of course start his list of famed bears with himself.
"Who else should be on my list?" he asked.
"Paddington?" McBear asked.
"Oh, of course, Paddington should definitely be in the top five".
"Winnie the Pooh?" asked Tom.
"Yogi Bear? Fozzie Bear?..."
"Wait, stop! I'm taking notes and can't keep up with the pace..."

The next morning we went to the Spanish Barn. This is the barn, where the prisoners of the Spanish Armada were detained after the navy battle in 1588. Traditionally, the Agatha Christie festivals are held in the barn.

We went inside and up on the stage. Roger wanted to find the organizers and ask, why he hadn't received an invitation to do a presentation.

McBear felt more like walking over to the coffee stall to get some coffee...

There were lots of guests for the welcome talk. We had difficulties finding three vacant seats and ended up having to share one seat. Some people looked like they had never seen bears before...

Among people who had been asked to do a talk was Robert Thorogood. He was famous for having written the stories behind the drama series on television, Death in Paradise. Each episode ends with the police detective gathering the plot to reveal the murderer - just like Agatha Christie did in her books about Hercule Poirot, the world famous detective. Here's Robert Thorogood signing books.
"I forgot to bring some of my books!" Roger sighed. "I could have been sitting here signing books now ..."

There was a book stall where one could buy books by Agatha Christie, books about Agatha Christie besides crime books written by murder writers. Agatha Christie's books have been translated to many languages around the world.

While in Torquay, we took the opportunity to visit Greenway. This is Agatha Christie's famous summer residence and it's located only around 10 km south of Torquay. Today, Greenway is a museum with most of Agatha Christie's old belongings and is owned by the National Trust in the UK.

You can read about Greenway on the website for agathachristie.com.

We wanted to get aquainted with how Agatha Christie used to work. Here's one of her type writers, a travel model. She was actually out travelling quite a lot - just like us.

Agatha Christie wrote an extensive amount of crime novels.
"How many novels have you written, Roger?" Tom asked.
"Well, my first novel was "Following my Star". Then there is of course my "I, Roger" - that was a massive hit".
Roger believed it would take a few years before he had written as many novels as Agatha Christie...

Agatha Christie wrote lots of books about the famous Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. One of the best books about Poirot is said to be Murder on the Orient Express.
Roger was thinking of preparing a talk on "How I survived a night on the Orient Express".
"Survived?" McBear said. "But...the Orient Express was a great experience."
"Well, I wasn't murdered, was I? Therefore I survived..."
Visiting the festival and Greenway, Tom felt inspired and was thinking of preparing a talk on "How many Bears did Agatha Christie have on her Bed?"
McBear also felt inspired and was thinking of a presentation to answer the big question: "how many bears appear in the novels by Agatha Christie?"

It was soon time for the next talk in the Spanish Barn. This time it was a talk by the famous Christie expert, Dr. John Curran from Ireland. He had written a huge book, Agatha Christie's Complete Secret Notebooks. Our lady human owned a copy of the book and it was sitting on the shelf at home.
"One day, my books will be available on shelves in the libraries." Roger believed. He had visions of three shelves filled with his books.
Roger was visualizing how Dr. Curran one day would compile a two volume set of "The Complete Works of Viking Roger".

Torquay, September 2023

Much too soon the festival ended, but it had been a great experience. Our Lady human hoped that not too much damage had been done to prevent us from showing up next year...