Brockenhurst, Newforest, England

June 2018.

To find a middle ground between my restless itchy feet and inability to take days off work, I set off on a short weekend trip to Brockenhurst, a village in the Newforest. This is in the county of Hampshire on the south coast part of England. It was just under a 2 hours drive from Burgess Hill on an early Saturday morning. We hit the road without any initial plan or prep. I have realised that often, these sort of trips are the best ones.

We rolled into the first campsite that we found - Hollands Woods. It was located just on edge of the forest with a vast stretch of grassland where wild horses and ponies were wandering around, completely  undisturbed of human presence. It was a whole different feel to be out there in the open in your tent with ponies pottering around without bothering you or getting bothered. It was just the pet dogs that bugged the horses a bit. They would jump every time the dogs barked. You could see foals with their mothers playing in the grassland and the wide variety of ponies was quite impressive.

After pitching our tent, we walked into the Brockenhurst town. Our campsite was on the outskirts and it took about 15minutes to walk into the village. It's a small village with the usual shops to be found i.e the village butcher, the village baker, the village market. The simplicity in the names of these shops starting with 'village...' made us smirk. There were a few touristy cafés and tearooms as well and we had a very good meal at one of the cafés the next day after our big walk.

We did a 15km walk around Brockenhurst through the forest. We followed a very detailed description that we found in the below link while googling - Newforestsexplorersguide

We found our way through cutesy cottages, an old 16th century Parish church, vast stretches of farm lands, shady woods with tall deciduous trees, many foxtrot flowers, unique mushrooms, a little pig farm and a dairy, rugged hilly lanes, wiggly streams, a shallow river called the Lymington river (it's more like a stream. We crossed the river on foot which was a bit of fun)and finally completing the circuit by walking back into the village. The weather was just perfect, mildly sunny but not hot at all.

We also drove down to the Lymington dock. We walked around the many ferries and boats docked there, musing over the different designs and prices of these boats. From the ferry point here, you could see the Isle of Wight sticking up across The Solent and whilst we were there, we saw the Isle of Wight ferry arrive at the dock. Though this area smells of blue sea, the actual essence of the Newforest lies in the wild rugged greenery inland where we camped.

I loved this short quick visit to the Newforest right in the middle of nowhere surrounded by wild ponies and thick woods. Whilst we chose to do the longest and apparently the best walk we could find around this area, there are many short and interesting walks that you can do around Brockenhurst. There are deer trails, more forests and woods, ancient churches and pretty villages. So many places to go but never enough time!