A trip away with time to stitch.

This weekend John and I had planned to go away for some walking and a night away. At the time of planning it I knew that I would be able to manage the walks but since then my chemotherapy drug was changed and the new one has made me more tired and achy. Still we decided to continue with our plans but scale them back.

The trip itself was a journey down memory lane. Not because I'd visited the area before but because I'd read the Winnie the Pooh stories as a child and now I was going to visit the places where the stories were set. Have you read the stories? They are beautiful and I loved reading them to my 3 children when they were young. You have to read the books in their original format not the Disney version. Disney made changes to the illustrations, for example Pooh Bear has a red top on and also looks rather like Yogi bear but in the original Pooh only wears a top when it is snowing. Disney also added in additional characters that do not appear in the stories. Anyway we were visiting Ashdown Forest in East Sussex where the places in the stories can be found. The 100 Acre Wood was based on the real 500 Acre Wood. The map in the books only shows the places that are found in 100 Acre Wood but others such as Pooh Stick Bridge and the House at Pooh Corner are in the wider forest.

Saturday morning we drove to a small village called Hartfield and after buying ice lollies to cool us down we set off to walk to Pooh stick Bridge. We had our lunch and lots of factor 50 sun screen with us as we both burn easily. I hadn't studied the map to see how much up and down hill was involved as we'd decided to play it by ear and go with how I felt. It was great being outdoors and although I wasn't able to walk at my usual speed it felt good.

The walk took us over the village sports field and across a meadow. We came to a bridge over a stream. John was in the mood for taking photos

There were wild flowers along the way,

and a red admiral butterfly.

We were able to look back across the fields to the village.

At one point we had to turn onto a road. Immediately opposite the path was this magnificent Great Dane statue.

  
I half expected him to jump of the pillar and come walking with us. In a meadow covered in buttercups and clover we stopped to enjoy our lunch before continuing on to Pooh Bridge. The bridge itself isn't much to look at and there were no sticks to be found anywhere in the vicinity of the bridge so we couldn't play Pooh sticks but when we arrived it was crowded out with children plus the sticks they had collected along the way, busily playing.

We followed a circular route and in total we walked about 6 miles. Once back in Hartfield we visited Pooh Corner, a cafe dedicated to everything Pooh bear. We decided to have a Pooh cream tea which was served with 2 scones. When it arrived I wished I'd opted for the smaller Piglet cream tea.

The tea cup is a normal full sized cup so you can see how big the scones are. The amount of cream was amazing as well. It took a while to finish and we both felt rather full. We sat in the garden to enjoy our cream tea as we didn't want to miss a minute of the sun. We were very careful over the day to keep reapplying the sun screen. 

Later we drove to Maresfield where we were staying at the Chequers pub.

Our room was in the coach house. The room was comfortable with a good en suite and tea and coffee making facilities. We had dinner at the pub and the food was delicious.

Having walked during the day I was quite tired so we retired to our room fairly early and I did some stitching on Ernestine before going to bed. I've also worked on her today. I've done her blue stockings and her bag and also completed more of the outline of her coat. I wish I'd used a darker green as it doesn't show up very well but I'm not going to unpick it now.

I'm not sure why there is a smudge or the orange spot on the photo as they aren't on the actual piece. It's all very odd.

Today we decided to visit Standen house and gardens. I'll show you the photos tomorrow. The were several pieces of embroidery and quilting to look at as we went round the house.

I'm linking this post with Kathy for Slow stitching Sunday Why not visit and see what everyone has been stitching.

Lyndsey