Monday 25 February 2013

A weekend away with Winnie the Pooh

This weekend my Matey and I had a very rare weekend off so we went to Sussex. I grew up there so it was a bit of a trip down memory lane for me.

We decided to splash out and head down there on the Friday night so we could make the most of the weekend. It may be an extra night to pay for but it does mean that you can get up and do something properly on the Saturday. (We might have sneaked a few sarnies into the hotel room with a bottle of wine. I love drinking wine out of water glasses in hotels. I think it's the combination of saving a few pennies, being slightly naughty and it has an edge of bohemian incorrectness. The better the wine the better the feeling!)

Saturday dawned to snow. This was not on the schedule but as it was fairly warm we headed off the Ashdown forest a.k.a Winnie The Pooh country. I haven't been there since I was a Girl Guide on an orienteering trip and my Matey had never ventured so far south.

The weather really was mad. We seemed to go through just about every season in course of our 4 hour walk.

Heading to 100 Acre wood we were in blizzard conditions:


What is wonderful about Ashdown forest is that it really does look like the illustrations in the book. Even though there are not many 'attractions' and they are a bit far apart to visit all of them in one wintery day you do feel that you are in Winnie the Pooh country. Traipsing across a blustery field I  felt a bit like this:

By the time we got to the Poohsticks Bridge it was positively spring.


My Matey won! This is not the original bridge which was a victim of it's own success and was damaged by too many Poohstickers. Replaced in 1999 with a bit of help from Disney it is a close reproduction. (I am quite pleased that I can claim to have have played Poohsticks on the original bridge when I was a nipper.)



We then headed back to the car via the Heffalump trap and The Enchanted Place:


With cold noses and toeses we felt we had earned our dinner.

2 comments:

  1. Ah this is great, I love Winnie the Pooh! So nice that you had chance to play pooh-sticks on the original bridge too.

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  2. It is possibly one of the nicest places to go for an amble. Only an hour and half from the Big Smoke and plenty of pretty pubs to put your feet up afterwards.

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