In the last decade there has been considerable advancement in the understanding of the role played by adsorbed polymers in modifying the forces between surfaces. This development has been both theoretical and experimental and the two have advanced largely in parallel. In this paper we report the forces observed between adsorbed layers of poly(ethylene oxide) of molecular weight 1.2 × 10⁶ at both partial coverages of adsorbed polymer, where an initial attractive force is measured, followed by a shorter-range repulsion and at full surface coverages, where a long-range, essentially osmotic, repulsive force is noted. The attractive forces observed at low surface coverages are attributed to polymer bridging and are qualitatively similar to the predictions of both mean-field and scaling treatments. The force–distance profiles on initial interaction between the fully covered surfaces resemble those predicted and observed for dangling, end-anchored chains.