It's a fair bet that thousands of spontaneous games rippled out from the World Poohsticks Championships in Little Wittenham
It may have been a sunny spring day, just like yesterday, when Winnie the Pooh first came to the bridge in Ashdown Forest, tripped over something and saw his fir cone fly out of his paw and into the river, thus inventing the game called Poohsticks. If so, it was appropriate, because yesterday produced exactly the right conditions for the resumption of the World Poohsticks Championships, postponed last year because of flooding, which were held once again on a bridge over the Thames at Little Wittenham in Oxfordshire. The championship is 28 years old now, and brings as many as 2,000 spectators and competitors to Little Wittenham to drop sticks into the river – throwing is strictly forbidden – with teams making the pilgrimage from as far away as Australia and the USA. Yet it's a fair bet, too, that yesterday's fine weather, by enticing families and the young of heart out of their homes and on to bridges all over Britain, also helped give birth to thousands of spontaneous games of Poohsticks, thus ensuring the good health of the game for fresh generations to come. The best thing of all about Poohsticks is that it can only be played in the open air and that, unlike almost every other child's game these days, it is completely free. Another joy is that it can be played from almost any bridge anywhere, even though special veneration will always rightly be reserved for the timber Posingford Bridge, near Tunbridge Wells, where Pooh first won 36 and lost 28 of his invention before he went home for tea.