New Forest Mini-break - Day #2 - Burley and Cider

So back to day two of the mini break (Thursday last week), amazingly the thermal shields kept out the *blazing* sun completely, allowing us to sleep in until 10am (which would *never* happen in a tent)...only real mishap being some of the cushions falling off the end of the bed during the night...need to find some ingenious solution to that, as it's a bit annoying the bed getting shorter and shorter during the night...anyway, it was warm, and quiet and dark right until we wanted it to be otherwise, so a great success...

The weather was staggeringly gorgeous again (what luck!), breakfast was rustled up (bacon sarnie and tea for me, coffee and a toasted cheese scone for Flyingpops) then we zipped up the awning, opened all the curtains, fired up the engine and headed into the New Forest in search of some nice scenery and local wildlife, which we found in abundance -

- we parked Colin up by the side of the (almost deserted) main road -

- and then hiked off towards what appeared (in the distance) to be a promising body of water -

- which even turned out to have a name "Whitten Pond" (accompanied by stark discouragement, should one be contemplating a cooling dip) -

- and there, beyond the wall of gorse flowers, we found some wildlife -

- a small field of New Forest ponies, stopped to drink (and scratch their itchy behinds on the gorse) -

- we stayed and watched them for a while, but they didn't seem inclined to do very much apart from munch continually at the thin grass by the side of the pond, so we walked back to the bus and continued our journey to down the road towards the lovely little village of Burley, this time being slightly outside the tourist season, it didn't seem quite as bad as our last visit, still quite busy though -

- the queue for ice creams was still as long as ever (and this lot wasn't even the hand-made variety) -

- we wandered around the town (which most oddly seems to consist of mostly witchcraft related gift shops, for no other reason than that a white witch lived there for a bit in the 1950s - the locals objected to her presence and she felt compelled to move out - but they seem to be making quite a good living in her wake, ironically ;) -

- then up the road towards the busy little scrumpy cider farm (woo hoo!), found out they do borough market once a week too(!) -

- where I scored a small bottle of "medium" (very nice indeed) -

- then we headed back to the camp site, Flyingpops feeling a bit poorly with a cold, so she had a little sleep in the back of the camper while I played on my PSP, made a start on the *excellent* "Vulcan 607" (about the bombing runs on the Falklands during the little spat we had with Argentina), then back to the gastropub for my lovely steak (as already mentioned) -

- came back full and happy, made a hot water bottle -

- and then drifted off to sleep watching Pirates of the Caribbean on the Shinco -

- a lovely day... ;)

Laughton update - cider

Well got my cider (and some mead), a home made steak pie and a whole load of stuff from 'Chilli Pepper Pete' (peri peri oil and seasoning, some jamaican jerk, mexican oregano and a really tasty chipotle bbq sauce), watched the F1, which was awesome, and now lazing in the sun doing some sodoko and eating olives...nice, this is how it should be...loads of visitors today, car park is completely full! ;)

New Forest - Not seen that many horses...

...since the Grand National! One of the (although certainly not unique) more unusual things about the New Forest is the sheer number of large animals that seem to be oblivious to the fact that there are cars hurtling by, they just ignore roads completely, seemingly treating them as a kind of "area of suprisingly little grass" (or some such horse-thought)...at least 3 of the traffic jams encountered today could be attributed to either equine -

- or bovine -

- related causes...!

The first stop of the day was to the visitors centre and museum (museum saved for a rainy day) which is located in the natural "traffic jam" of Lyndhurst. There are actually *permanent* signs on the roads leading to this (otherwise charming) little town announcing "long delays", and it seems that there is a good reason for this - if you look at this place on a map you will see that, thanks to the limited number of roads in the locale, Lyndhurst falls at a bit of a crossroads making it a perpetual bottleneck...
Good for the resident shop owners, though, as once you get in, you are kind of stuck...(they must do alright too, because the local garages were only selling Ferrari and Maserati cars)...!

Here is a shot down the high street -

- In the visitors centre I obligingly coughed up two quid for a nice large blow-up map of the area in the cunningly placed "entrance shop" only to find a free one 30 seconds later in the "information centre" at the back...doh!

Then a quick visit (before the parking ticket ran out) to both of the two camping shops in town for some essentials (like a tent pole replacement to fix the broken one before the festival season starts for the year) plus a few other "outdoor" things that seemed to have been mislaid in the move, and (accidentally on purpose) skipping the enormous queue all the round way the one way system by shooting up the wrong lane, it was time for lunch...

The venue was the "Green Dragon" in the *tiny* village of Brook. A charming (thatched-cottage-style) place that has had a license to serve intoxicating beverages for over 200 years! -


- I went for one of the specials, an absolutely melt in the mouth shoulder of lamb which slightly unfortunately arrived sat in a rather unexciting mint jus. It was accompanied by one of the worst, overcooked selections of veg I have ever had the unpleasant opportunity to poke with a fork, and the roast spuds were nothing better than average, a *bit* on the crunchy side, but *no* way near fluffy inside (I only ate two of them) -

- oh and also (and this is funny because I predicted this exact eventuality about 5 minutes before it happend), Flyingpops' Brie Baguette turned up with bacon all over it, so that was sent back to the kitchen. It flew back in *just* about the amount of time it *might* have taken to make a new one (well, *almost* anyway)... ;)

From here we moved on to inspect the interestingly moniker'ed (is that a word?) "Sandy Balls" campsite (God only knows what made them pick that name) for the site of a possible later-in-the-year break (which I really wish we were taking now!). Take a look with me down the "high street" onsite, it's actually more like a little village than a campsite! -

- Let me leave you in no doubt that this place is certainly facility rich - there is a pub, an italian resturant, a SPAR supermarket (bit overpriced) at least one swimming pool (but there might be one indoor and one outdoor, we didn't check specifically, but the aerial photo seemed to hint at it)...plus cycle hire, and obviously loads of organised kids entertainment...

Interestingly, the place was *absolutely* packed out, even this early in the season and to be quite honest, I felt a bit put off by that, as *quite* what it is going to be like later in the year when the weather improves, I just don't know -

- Oh and I'm not exactly jumping up and down at the thought of volutarily pitching the tent on a spot of land absolutely *covered* in stones either (ouch!), each of the pitches seems to be deliberately made up of shingle! Now, I don't know about you, but I normally have at least a half-hearted go at getting *rid* of all the stones from where I am planning to pitch my tent, *not* trying to find the greatest concentration possible before settling down! Very strange for a bunch of so called "professionals" in the field of camping... -

- All in all though, it did look like a reasonably nice place perhaps for a weekend away (if not ideal for a full blown camping holiday)...

That done, some "interesting" little roads took us to where the day finished off - in Burley (a *total* tourist trap) where this mother and foal has decided to hang out in the car park for some odd reason (actually, it might have been all the hay that *somehow* ended up there (wonder if they shoo away the not-so-photogenic ones each morning? Ok, sorry, getting a bit cynical there!)) -

- and there was one other fringe benefit of the stop over (*slurp*) -

- only really a tiny shop, no tour, or demonstrations or anything like that (apart from the "on request" bottling demonstration, of course)....so not really a patch on the Cornish Cyder Farm experience...but hey, the "Cyder" they put out from there tastes rather like it belongs in the toilet (*before* human-digestive-processing) and this New Forest stuff is rather nice actually...so "Cheers"...and now I am off to bed...nite... ;)