What an
awesome day trip by Original London Walks people and again I
had a lot of fun taking one of their tours.
Travelling
for 55 mins south from Victoria by train to East Grinstead,
which is now the end of the line, we arrived and walked around
a very old English town. The town used to be a smugglers stop
on the way to London from the coast. A bus then transported
us through part of the Ashdown forest and over the West/East
line to Hartfield for lunch in a traditional English pub. I
ate with two lovely American Ladies who like myself are living
her on a more permanent basis.
Finally
we got to the good stuff. We boarded the bus and were driven
into Ashdown forest again. Out we got to walk up to Gills Lap,
known to Pooh fans as Galleons Lap. The countryside is scattered
with beautiful yellow bushes.
Can you
identify this golden plant? Yes it is a noxious New Zealand
weed that farmers send a great deal of time trying to get rid
of it.
We passed
some forest and in the distance could spot 500-acre wood. This
is an imitation, but not far from the actual spot.
Roo’s
sandy pit looked a bit more like a swamp at this time of the
year.
The Enchanted
Forest felt just that as Pooh sat under a shady tree and we
listened to A. A. Milne’s explanation as to why the Enchanted
forest was so called.
Christopher
Robin (A. A Milne’s son) noticed that the trees in this
area stood in a circle, and when Pooh and himself tried to count
the trees they could never be sure if there were 64 or 63 even
when Christopher Robin tied a piece of string around each tree.
I tried
to work it out and came up with 66 then 60 so I to believe it
is enchanted. Pooh was Christopher’s bear formally known
as Edward Bear, however when Christopher was 4 years old he
declared that his bear need a proper name. The Milne’s
taken vacations in the Ashdown forest area and had befriended
a swan that was named Pooh. At the time the war had just ended
and London zoo acquired the Canadian armies mascot a bear named
Winnie. Christopher spent a lot of time with the bear. So he
decided that Winnie the Pooh would be Edward’s name from
then on. When A. A Milne suggested that Winnie was a girls name,
Christopher replied ‘It’s Winnie THE Pooh’. And
that was the only explanation. A. A Milne was essentially a
play write, but he wished to be known as an all round author
so he wrote ‘Winnie the Pooh’ and ‘The House
at Pooh Corner’ and then wrote adult books also. However
he became famous for the Winnie the Pooh series, and was labelled
a children’s author.
The bus arrived again to take us to Pooh Bridge. As we walked
along the path to the bridge, we found a house just for piglet.
Piglet of course lived under a sign saying Trespassers will
so it was only right for Pooh and Piglet to stop for a photo.
Playing
Pooh sticks on Pooh Bridge sums up what it is like to live in
England. Playing Pooh sticks on Pooh Bridge sums up what it
is like to live in England. We have lived with so much influence
from Britain that to really be in a place I’ve only read
about for twenty years is an indescribable feeling. The images
from my head have so much more meaning. It’s more like
living it than just making it up. Here are a lot of tourists
and Pooh and Piglet playing Pooh sticks.
On the way
back we stopped off at the House on Pooh Corner for souvenirs.
It was a
great day out in Kent. During the day we saw an authentic Tudor
style house which has survived from the 15-century. The exposed
beams look more like painted lines from the photo but they are
real.
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