Our New-Forest Adventure: Day One (20 January)

£4 doesn’t buy a lot in London. The equivalent of $9 CAD might get you two coffees in a café or one (yes, only one) cash-fare tube journey through central London. But thanks to Bob’s clever internet research, £4 got us two return bus rides (that’s £1 for each leg of the journey), tax included, to Southampton, 130 km southwest of London. Bob’s relation, Anne, invited us out for a weekend in the country, and so off we went!

Anne and Alan kindly picked us up at the Southampton Coach Station and we stopped at a lovely, fifteenth-century thatched inn/ pub in Brook, about 20 km west of Southampton, for a bit of lunch.
I tried an iconic pub lunch for the first time, and came away very impressed with my “ploughman’s lunch.” Actually, we all ordered a ploughman’s, which came with our choice of centrepiece: Alan and I had Stilton cheese, Anne had cheddar cheese, and Bob had ham. The chutney, salad, and baguette that came as accompaniments were all superbly fresh and delicious. Here’s my lunch:
During our visit, we toured a lot of the surrounding countryside, thanks to Alan’s careful driving and Anne’s thoughtful planning—they were excellent tour guides who made us want to return to see more of the charming area! Nearly all the places we toured through are located in the New Forest, England’s newest National Park, established in 2005. Set aside in 1079 by William the Conqueror as a hunting ground, it’s one of the few medieval forests still found in Europe, and contrary to its name, it’s not all forest. Although we only saw part of the Forest, the landscape we saw was extremely diverse and beautiful, including heathland, grassland, water, and forest. The park is usually very crowded in the summer, but it was blissfully quiet during the two sunny, cool January days that we were there. We left the planning up to Anne and only had one “must-do” on our list: to see a New Forest pony. I was worried that we might miss out on such a sight, but didn’t realize at the time how silly a worry that was:


There are about 4000 semi-wild ponies grazing in the New Forest. Although they are all owned by approximately 500 “commoners” who retain the traditional “right of common pasture,” they roam freely within the 570-square-km park. And, on a less factual note, they’re really really cute. “Look: more ponies!” was the sentence I most uttered today.




This one was my favourite:

This clever pony held his ground on the car-park side of the gate leading to a small, touristy area of shops in Burley, biding his time for a snack or someone to forget to shut the gate so he could explore the potentially food-filled other side. Bob patted him between the eyes, and almost did forget to shut the gate (blinded by cuteness, as was perhaps the pony’s plan), but in the end, we left the pony in exactly the same spot, patiently waiting for the next people to come through the gate. We also ventured outside the New Forest for a peek at Milford-on-Sea, or more specifically, the view from Milford-on-Sea,
which included the Isle of Wight with its “needles” formations at the tip of the island,
as well as Hurst Castle, located past the lighthouse, and a walkable distance away. You can’t really tell from the photos, but it was so windy on the beach that I could barely hold the camera level to take these pictures! Accordingly, we decided to save a walk to Hurst Castle for another visit, bundled back into the car, and headed to Anne’s for some tea, a bit of a nap (it was our holiday away from the city, after all), a delicious dinner prepared by Anne, conversation in the living room over biscuits, chocolate, cheese, and crackers, and an early turn-in. It was a wonderfully cosy end to our first day in the country.