We packed up and left our Beach house and headed off towards Ashdown forest and Winnie the Pooh. Yay!

Our first mistake was to forget that the Festival of Speed was on again today (Anthony felt he'd seen everything in the past three days and decided not to attend today). Traffic delays! I think we averaged four kilometres an hour for 30 minutes before we were able to turn off and take a different route.

We arrived in Ashdown Forest after about another hours drive. We'd been here in 2007, but had missed the Pooh Stick bridge (which made me very sad). We wandered up to Galleon's Lap and saw the beautiful view and the memorial to the author A A Milne and illustrator E H Shepherd at the edge of the Hundred Acre Wood: "and by and by they came to an enchanted place at the very top of the Forest called Galleon's Lap".

This time I had GPS! We found the car park and wandered down the track towards the Pooh Stick bridge (which is on google maps!). On the way through the lush green forest I saw a little track leading left off the main path: there was Eeyore's house!

I continued on. It was a fairly reasonable walk and (unusually!) Anthony had taken the lead to ensure no heffalumps were around. When I arrived at the bridge with two trusty sticks in hand I had to coerce a young girl to join me in a pooh sticks game (that didn't take much effort). She won, but I was happy.

I walked back to the car enjoying the atmosphere. I was transported through time to both the little creek and surrounding greenery that I played in when I was little and to the wonderful stories I have read and re-read since the day I was given my own copy of my still favourite book.

After this little adventure we drove to Pooh's Corner (which was just a little shop). There was nowhere to stop and the narrow, almost one way, English street meant we ended up meandering up the road until we found a little village where we stopped for lunch.

We had delicious baguettes with roast lamb, lemonade and ginger beer sitting in The Crown Inn overlooking the village green (we didn't stop too long - murders happen in these Midsomer villages) before we took off for Heathrow.

We had decided that logistically it would work better if we returned our hire car and got a taxi for our early morning flight. We arrived at our cheap and cheerful B&B to discover it was more cheap than cheerful. Never mind it was only one night and our room was relatively clean and the staff were super friendly. It was a "fail" on the organising side as by losing the hire car it didn't end up much cheaper than staying at a far nicer hotel.

Next door was "The Six Bells". This was obviously the "local" and it was obvious we weren't. We had a couple of drinks and watched Germany beat Slovakia 3-0. We also watched one of the local dad's give in to the pressure of his 4 year old daughter by putting in a couple of coins in the pokie machine and letting her push the buttons! Maybe not the "flashest" of neighbourhoods.

We then decided we would try our luck up the road for dinner. We were a bit worried about the standard of restaurants available, given our experience at the pub, but as we looked into the local Indian restaurant, Anthony noticed the waiter had a tie on and we hoped that was a good indicator. We ventured inside.

It was a nicely decorated restaurant with white linen cloths and friendly staff. Our meal was delicious and we returned to our accommodation satisfied. We had an early flight to Hamburg in the morning, so we went to bed. Luckily our beds were comfy.