The route past Portsmouth and Southampton which has neen a bit of a block for my coastal journey and in my mind was completed in August on my Birthday.
Catching the train back to Sholing with my bike, I started the day heading up and over the Ichen Bridge to Town Key and the ferry to
Hythe.
Once in Hythe I felt I should be walking but, actually the Solent Way cuts through the New Forest along the edge of a pretty busy road the Beaulieu. I was desperate to get off this route, breathing all rhose fumes cannot be good for you!
I was feeling a bit time pressed too as the last train I could take to get home was at 1730 hours, so I didnt stop at Beaulie although I’d have liked to.
The New Forest is beautiful, being a very old Forest and heath land, so called New by William the Conqueror when it became a new place to hunt.
Now in the summer holidays it is heaving with people hoping to escape to the countryside.
I took a quiet road and was then confronted with this….
I survived, although one mare came towards me, maybe she thought I’d feed her. For those of you who dont live in the UK, the New Forest Ponies are free to roam. They are an indigenous breed and they are owned by commoners of the New Forest. They are managed under a feudal governance set up in the 1300’s (I think!) to manage sovereign forest. Well its a very unusual management system either way you look at it but it must work to still exist I think.
I picked up the Solent way again and bimbled into Lymington where I caught the train home.
All of this was to set myself up for Walking and Camping in the next few days where I will try to report in the field as it were!
The Travelling Bee 