THE BEAR NECESSITIES
The Ashdown Forest and Bateman's

Adults: £12.30 Seniors: £12.30
Availability: April to October, Saturday to Wednesday
Coach miles: 35
Walking: Gentle
Wheelchair access: Limited

Everybody loves a nice bear and this tour features the most famous teddy bear of all, the author of the Jungle Book and a man of real mystery. Our guide will be waiting for you at 10.30a.m. near Uckfield. After coffee it's off to see the forest. Our route takes us through Crowborough, once home to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The forest is an area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and was a centre of the iron industry back in Elizabethan times. Trees were felled to produce charcoal and the landscape today is part woodland and part heath. Rare plants and animals thrive here and, of course, Pooh Bear and his friends lived and played here too.

Our morning includes many of the places that were used for the illustrations of the Pooh books and we enjoy a gentle stroll to see One Hundred Acre Wood, the inspiration for Wol's house. There are charming villages along the way and we stop for lunch in one. From here we drive to Bateman's, Rudyard Kipling's home for over 30 years. It was love at first sight when he saw this house and today the rooms are left as they were when he lived here. We see the lovely gardens, the mill and even Kipling's Rolls Royces. There is time for tea and you will be homeward bound by 4.45p.m.

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