winnie-the-pooh and ashdown forest

the winnie-the-pooh books by a.a. milne and e.h. shepard have always been very important to me. in march 1997 i spent two days visiting the real ashdown forest, near the village of hartfield, east sussex, england. the milnes used to spend their vacations there, and it has such famous sites as pooh sticks bridge, gill's lap (known as galleon's lap in the books), and the 500 acre wood (a.k.a. the 100 acre wood). in the village of hartfield, there's a little shop called pooh corner, which sells lots of pooh merchandise and is a good place to go for information and maps.

i took my ancient, much-loved sears disney-style pooh bear with me, and strapped him to my backpack as i hiked around. it was a beautiful weekend. i didn't find many historical sites - just pooh sticks bridge and galleon's lap - but i had a wonderful time anyway.

for those of you who are interested in visiting the forest someday, i've put together some useful tourist information about ashdown forest. please read this page before emailing me with questions! last updated august 2003!

i've also scanned some of my pictures of pooh sticks bridge and the a.a. milne memorial in ashdown forest - click on the thumbnails to get larger pics (about 150K).