New Forest

The (not so) New (not quite) Forest has seen action since before Guillaume le Bâtard left his calvados behind in Falaise to take up a new job overseas as William the Conqueror (1066 And All That). Our walking group had no such ambition as we set out from the car park across the moors in search of big adventures and perhaps some primordial forest. Sneezy, Doc and I had joined with C, C, S, S, S and N hoping to cover either 10 or 20 miles.

The first 11 miles was basically a loop around Burley Street, a village we never saw. We walked the disused railway for a while west towards Brown Loaf and then went north past a tumulus on Church Moor (they're easy to see on a map but I never saw any on the ground). On across Kingston Great Common where there were lots of New Forest ponies and up to Picket Post where we headed back south-east across the ford at Ridley Bottom. We had a section actually in trees in various Inclosures (sic) from Berry Wood through to Redrise Hill. We finished by passing between Shoot Wood and Spy Holms before walking up Holman's Bottom, looping back north into Cot Bottom and finally returning to the car park between Holmsley Bog and Goatspen Plain where we said goodbye to Sneezy and N, 2C and 3S until dinner.

Doc and I reversed south-east along the disused railway until we entered Wilverley Inclosure with great trees and some signage keeping the history alive. Planted in 1775  to grow timber for the Royal Navy, the first trees didn't grow, so the inclosure was re-opened in 1808, yet closed again in 1809 and planted with oaks and beeches still there today. An exit to Wilverley Plain was rewarded by a 99 with strawberry for me chocolate for Doc. Kites and model aircraft were aloft to take your mind off the cold breeze. Doc had mapped out the entire day's walk and navigated us along to Horsehoe Earth to a right hand turn into Horseshoe Bottom. We completed our last long leg north west back to the car park through Broadley, Wootton Coppice, Brownhill and Holmsley Inclosures mostly on unsealed forestry access roads.

In the end, Doc and I had the legs for the 20 miles and actually walked 33 km. The others all did 11 miles and several have the hip-aches and blisters to prove it. I burned 2000 calories and drank four litres. The 33 km walk time was 7:22 with several breaks totalling 38 minutes. Expressed as Trailwalker times, it suggests we'd do it in 24 hours: 22 hours walking and a total of 2 hours in our ten planned 12 minute breaks. Except today was basically flat and cool!

THANK YOU JEFF & RAELENE!