Poohsticks

Poohsticks is a game first mentioned as being played by Winnie-the-Pooh and friends in the book "The House at Pooh Corner" by A. A. Milne, as well as in the animated featurette "Winnie the Pooh and a Day for Eeyore". Invented by Pooh, it is an extremely simple game, played on a bridge over a river. Each participant drops a stick on the upstream side of the bridge; the player whose stick first appears on the other side is the winner.

The Poohsticks Bridge is a bridge located in Ashdown Forest, close to the village of Hartfield, East Sussex, England. This is considered to be the bridge on which A. A. Milne and his son Christopher Robin first played the game. The game can still be played there to this day, but visitors are advised to bring their own sticks, as previous participants have rather denuded the surrounding area of suitable material.

The World Poohsticks Championships take place annually at Day's Lock on the River Thames near Dorchester-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, England. The event was started in 1983 as a fund-raising event for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. The lockkeeper put out a box of sticks and a collection box and it soon became an annual event. It originally took place in January but in the icy weather of 1997 it was moved to March. It is now organized by the Rotary Club of Sinodun, based in nearby Wallingford. The championships feature individual and team events. A member of the team from the Czech Republic which won the team event in 2004 explained the winning technique to Jonathan Hancock in an interview on BBC Radio Oxford: he looked to see which part of the river was fastest, and threw the stick in there.

Popular culture

In the BBC sitcom, "To the Manor Born", character Audrey fforbes-Hamilton plays Poohsticks alone on the bridge over a brook on her former ancestral estate. She is later joined by the incumbent Lord of the Manor and after scolding him for not knowing the game (and other English customs) leads him in a contentious match.

In the film, "Into My Heart", Ben (Rob Morrow) and Nina (Claire Forlani) play a game of Poohsticks.

It can more recently be seen in the Marks & Spencer clothes advert where Twiggy, Myleene Klass and other models also play it.

External links

* [http://www.pooh-sticks.com/ World Pooh Sticks Championships Home Page]
* Map and aerial photo sources for grid reference:
** mmukscaled|TQ470338|25|TQ 470 338 — Poohsticks Bridge near Hartfield — marked on the Ordnance Survey "25k" map
** mmukscaled|SU567934|25|SU 567 934 — Day's Lock and the Sinodun Hills
* [http://geoimages.berkeley.edu/wwp904/html/BruceHemming.html Bruce Hemming's page about the Poohsticks Bridge] with Quicktime panorama — note that the coordinates given are in error by 25 km
* [http://www.the-river-thames.co.uk/misc.htm River Thames information, including the Poohsticks championship]
* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/oxfordshire/4845136.stm BBC — 23rd annual World Championships]
* There [http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:vJRvxH5FPwQJ:www.poohsticks.com/+poohsticks&hl=en&lr=&strip=1 used to be] an [http://www.poohsticks.com online version of Pooh Sticks] which may yet be resurrected. [http://poohsticks.crowsfoot.net/login.php Another site] has recently sprung up hoping to emulate the old site as much as it can.
* [http://www.rotary-ribi.org/clubs/homepage.asp?ClubID=568 The Rotary Club of Sinodun]