Take a trip back into your childhood, and visit the home of Winnie-the-pooh

Pull on your Big Boots and head for a Big Adventure by stepping into Five Hundred Acre Wood, home of Winnie-the-pooh, in celebration of a new film about the inspiration behind the stories

When did you last play Pooh sticks? You don’t have to head to the original bridge where Winnie-the-pooh and Piglet played the game in AA Milne’s stories, because any bridge with water flowing under it will do, but it’s an extra special game if you do. Ashdown Forest is just over the border in East Sussex. Venture into Hundred Aker Wood, in reality called the Five Hundred Acre Wood, and you’ll come across a wooden signpost to Pooh Bridge, signalling you’re in Pooh territory.

Be ready with twigs to watch them sail down the river – a tributary of the Medway – before darting to the other side to see whose twig appears first. Christopher Milne, who died in 1996, did much for the restoration of the bridge. AA Milne’s biographer Ann Thwaite, consultant to the film Goodbye Christopher Robin, which opened at the weekend, said: “He also led the fight to save the forest from development and oil exploration. He said he took the playground of his Sussex childhood with him wherever he went.” Today, the area is highly protected. The only sign of any building in the forest are versions of Eeyore’s house in the woods, made from twigs and branches by those on a family day out.

In the open heathland, rugged sandy paths are bordered by swathes of purple heather and yellow gorse and bracken, while in the wooded areas, tall pine grow next to chestnut, birch and oak. “The whole thing is a celebration of outdoor play and imagination,” said Ann. “Christopher Robin, the real boy, was very keen on climbing trees. “The great outdoors was a great therapy for Milne when the whole of England was trying to recover from the effect of war. The landscape hasn’t changed in all those years,” she said. “You can’t even hear any traffic. It’s very sandy, too. There’s a scene in Winnie-the-pooh when Roo is playing in a sandpit and if you look at the books you can see where Shepard (illustrator EH Shepard) was drawing the actual place.”

The still unspoilt spot where AA Milne and his son Christopher Robin spent their time in the 1920s on walks, may now be the subject of a film, but there is no hint of Disney-esque homage to the most famous bear in the world. Among your ramblings, you can head to a shady circle of pine trees in Gills Lap (renamed Galleons Lap in the books), which in Milne’s words was an ‘enchanted place’.

And just out of the trees, take in the spectacular view from the High Weald of the Downs, a patchwork quilt of green fields, divided by forest. Near here is a small, inconspicuous reminder on the rock where father and son sat and where the actors who play them are featured in the film.

It is a commemorative plaque to AA Milne and illustrator EH Shepard who captured the magic of the forest.

As AA Milne wrote: “Sitting there, they could see the whole world spread out until it reached the sky.”