Going on a Winnie The Pooh bear hunt

Pooh Bridge. We played lots of rounds of Pooh Sticks.

It's not very often that you expect a tattooed and pierced biker to be extolling the delights of playing Pooh sticks on Pooh bridge but that's what happened when I mentioned I was going on a little road trip to Sussex. "Oh you have to go to Hartfield. It's where Pooh Bridge is," said Hagar (yep, that's his actual name). Hartfield is a typically lovely countryside village. There's a notice board with parish council business attached to it and a pub with a dog. It also has Pooh Corner and Pooh Bridge because it's where A.A. Milne lived when he was coming up with the Winnie The Pooh stories for his son, Christopher Robin. Not that it makes a song and dance about it. We were ambling along looking for Pooh Corner when we were suddenly upon it. It's an appealingly unassuming trove of Winnie The Pooh delights of all kinds, with a little tea room tucked away at the back. We may have spent a bit of time trying to decide if we could buy only a Tigger or an Eeyore then deciding we couldn't have one without the other but then what about the others? This is why we're not allowed into animal rescue centres without supervision. We were a bit too late to have tea but any menu that has Smackerels and Whatnots on it is fine by us.

What we did have time for though was a stroll through the countryside to find Pooh Bridge. You may think you can play Pooh sticks from any bridge and you'd be right but playing Pooh sticks at actual Pooh Bridge was possibly one of the nicest things I've ever done. It's quiet (though I'm guessing in summer it can get a bit more crowded) and so far away from any stresses of modern life that it's impossible not to run excitedly over to the other side of the bridge to see if your stick has come first as if you were 7 years old and three quarters.

If you can't visit Hartfield, Mike and June, who run Pooh Corner, have done an online tour to accompany their shop. It's definitely worth a visit though. Who doesn't want to go Tigger spotting?