Walking in the new forest
by Anton Piatek
On new year’s eve we decided to go for a walk to try and shake off some of those calories from Christmas, so we went out to Brockenhurst in the New Forest.
Trip recored in EveryTrail, view full trip
Following Walk #22 from Hampshire and The New Forest Walks (Pathfinder Guides) we had a nice time, though the recent wet weather meant the walk involved lots of avoiding puddles (some near lake proportions!). While I mention the book, I should say that it is a rather nice walking book as it not only has waypoint data that can be entered into a gps (though not really complete enough to just follow the gps), it also has excerpts of Ordnance Survey maps which are much better than the sketches some books use. The route description is also clear and easy to follow.
At the end of the walk we saw a herd of close to 30 deer, though the photos I attempted to take were really rubbish as they were quite a distance away and it was an overcast day so not much light to take photos in (not to mention lots of trees in the way)
Then on the 2nd Jan we decided to head out for another walk in the New Forest, this time near Ashurst (walk #6 from the same book if you are curious, but we deviated a little)
Trip recored in EveryTrail, view full trip
This walk would probably have been just as muddy, however as we had a cold night the ground was mostly frozen and covered with lots of frost in the morning so was pretty firm. No deer this time, but a few new forest ponies and some wonderful patterns in the ice
