Easter in the New Forest, Hampshire, Southern England

April 10th – April 13th 2009

Day One – Drive to Brockenhurst

We picked up the car on Thursday evening at the Sixt rental place just across from Battersea Park train station. We’d reserved a 4-door automatic Golf, but it seems that they’d oversold them and had run out so they gave us a free upgrade. The first offer was for a Mercedes, but it was just a two door; with the kiddos in tow we’d definitely need a 4-door. We weren’t expecting the Volkswagen Touareg – a car the size of Belgium. I nervously got behind the wheel and set up. The sat-nav worked its magic and we made it back to our flat in about 15 minutes, passing buses with reckless abandon.

Friday morning, we weren’t feeling particularly healthy, having been out the night before with Tim and Heidi at The Comedy Store at Leicester Square where we may have overindulged just a little bit. We had neglected to pack at all for the trip prior to Friday morning, so after dragging our sorry asses out of bed at the ungodly hour of 8am, we threw everything into a suitcase and loaded up The Beast. We had planned to hit the road at about 9, but due to the time it took to actually get moving, we didn’t head out until closer to 9:45 – having missed both breakfast and more urgently, coffee.

The drive was initially uneventful, taking us down through Balham and Tooting, then out past Kingston onto the M3. Apparently everyone in London heads west at Easter and we started to hit a bit of traffic, caused mostly it seemed by broken down cars and one on fire at the side of the motorway. At one point, Frau Gretel (the stern and LOUD voice of The Beast’s built-in sat nav thingy) warned us that THERE WERE QUEUES AHEAD. I shit myself just a little bit, having not known that the car could do that on its own.

Before I go too much further, a few notes about The Beast. First, it’s really wide. I parked at the front of a long line of normal cars on Thursday night – my tyres were touching the curb, yet the other side was jutting out noticeably further than other cars. Second, it’s weird. The windshield wipers will only work when the car is moving – if you’re stopped, it doesn’t matter what you do, the windshield will remain soiled. Also, the engine must be running to tilt the side mirrors in when parking. Very bizarre. On the plus side, it does have a built-in sat nav super-duper entertainment/radio/media player thing in the dash that we found useful – the little sat nav did the directing and the one in the car was used to see where we were going. It’s a diesel, and very big, so it doesn’t seem to have that much power. I really had to stomp on the gas to get it to go, but once moving it’s very comfortable to drive.

So – traffic was starting to get a little heavy, but nothing too bad. Until we got to the A337 heading into Lyndhurst. At that point, it turned into a very long parking lot – the mile from where the queue started to the red light that was causing took almost as long as the entire 90 mile drive to that point. I was not amused, and the dogs in the back seat were getting restless.

We finally did make it to Brockenhurst and found the B&B without too much bother, which was a nice change for us (that Sat Nav has paid for itself several times over lately). Our room wasn`t quite ready so we took the kids out for a quick walk in the drizzle while we waited. Did I mention the drizzle? It had been sunny for about two consecutive weeks in Britain preparing for the Bank Holiday, when it is legally obliged to rain, or at least fitfully spray cold piss down on merrymakers trying to have a good time away from work. Not that I’m bitter at all. We had to spend quite a bit of time avoiding rather large piles of horse shit on our little walk, which we found odd, seeing as we’re pretty much in the centre of the village. Turns out, it’s not odd here; it’s completely normal to have largish herds of wild horses, forest ponies, donkeys, pigs, cows, and occasionally deer wander through and around the towns and villages in the Forest, leaving trails of closely-chewed foliage and steaming mounds of poo.

So – we got into our room and put our things down. The room is really nice, if a little on the small side (we’ve become hotel/b&b snobs) with a little hallway for the dogs and a nice-ish bathroom. We even have our own little fenced-in patio so that the kids can run about without escaping. We spent a little while getting settled in before heading out for dinner.

The B&B has a little guest comment book where people can leave reviews of local eateries. A pub up the road called “The Snakecatcher” got good reviews according to other guests, so we decided to give it a go.

It was odd. It was up near the train station and sort of looked like a waiting room into which someone had installed a bar. The menu was even odder. They’d evidently got a chef in with delusions of grandeur who seemed to think that The Snakecatcher was in either central London or central Paris – it included such typical pub fair as confit of duck leg with a currant sauce, rack of lamb, and other gastronomic delights. It was a bit thin on the traditional pub food which one expects to see in a pub. To be fair, what they served was done fairly well, if a bit unseasoned. But when I’m at a pub in the country I want country pub food, not confit of bloody duck.

After dinner we thought we’d give a second pub up the road a go, to see if Brockenhurst could redeem itself. It couldn’t. The Rose and Crown (I mean honestly, if I see another Rose and Crown, or Royal Oak, or Red Lion, I’m going to stab myself in the eye with a bar drinks twizzler) looked really quite nice from the outside; a big stone building which was clearly quite old exuding that jolly friendly atmosphere which we look for in a pub. Inside, however, it appeared that a group of elderly retired pub owners gathered together 100 years of bad pub wall crap and nailed it all to every available vertical surface. Then took belt sanders to ever thing else. We only had one drink. Then headed for bed.

Day two - A Walk in the Forest

Saturday dawned grey and damply, as we had expected, despite the Met Office’s cheerful assurances that the sun would soon be out. We took the kids for their morning constitutional before presenting ourselves in the dining room for our breakfast. We had the option of a full English or an omelette – we both went for the full. Despite the name, it wasn’t actually that big, but quite tasty – the expected fried egg, both streaky AND back bacon (posh, innit?), a fried tomato and a little Portobello mushroom. No beans, oh well.

The day, despite the general dampness, looked like it wasn’t actually going to rain, so we grabbed a pre-printed laminated map and headed out to walk the New Forest. As it turned out, the map was crap. We carefully followed the directions to the first marker point and went in completely the wrong direction. After walking for about half a mile, a local resident who happened to be walking the opposite direction into town asked if we needed help reading the map. We said yes, and handed it over. He inspected it for quite some time, turning it this way and that, before deciding that he had no idea where we were meant to be going or where it was expecting us to start, and this coming from someone who had lived in the area for 25 years!

He kindly took us into town and showed me where to buy an ordinance survey map for 8 quid, and set us on the right path on completely the other side of the village from where we’d started. We left the paved road and down a soggy boggy path across the heath towards the forest near Brockenhurst. The kiddoes don’t get a huge amount of exercise in the city so we weren’t sure how well they (or we) were going to do. At first they seemed to flag a big tramping through the giant mud puddles and boggy bits, but like all small children and me, they seemed to delight in getting completely filthy and soon were merrily bouncing along beside us.

We soon entered the forest proper on a bike path, where the going was much easier, and made fairly good time. We were extremely glad that we’d bought the ordinance map, as the forest was complicated, with turning and branches all over the place. It was a very odd place to be – obviously people had been there for hundreds, if not thousands of years, and the passing time and nature couldn’t completely obliterate the evidence of their lives. There were what seemed to be irrigation channels and little raised earthworks all over the place which, based on the size of trees growing out of them, had been there for quite some time.

It’s odd – The Forest by Edward Rutherford, which I am reading at the moment, was set in this very place, despite being (initially) set in 1099!
Several hours and two very tired monkeys later we made it out the other side of the forest into the town of Bank, near Lyndhurst, and the pub we’d been aiming at – the Oak Inn (have I mentioned that the British aren’t particularly creative in the naming of their pubs?). They had a huge patio seating area at the back, so we found a spare picnic bench with the kids and sat down to a few tasty pints and a surprisingly good lunch. Unfortunately the walk hadn’t completely exhausted the kids and they managed to find the energy to be very loud and embarrassing when other dogs had the audacity to walk through what was very clearly THEIR pub.

Having had our fill of lunch and beer...well, not MY fill of beer to be perfectly honest...we headed back to the forest, fully intent on walking the five miles back to Brockenhurst and the hotel. About 20 yards down the path though, Hamilton was lagging behind by quite a bit and not looking so pleased with the plan. We decided that the easier option would be to walk into Lyndhurst and find the bus stop which was apparently conveniently located outside yet another pub, as neither of us particularly wanted to carry either of the dogs the five miles back.

The pub turned out to be a bit crap, and the bus was EXPENSIVE – five pounds sixty, as opposed to the 90 pence I’m used to paying in London! It was, however, easier than walking and dropped us off right at the Brockenhurst train station (Jamie would probably like me to mention the moment on the bus where I stood up to press the “stop” button and tried to sit back down, not realizing that the seat was one of the spring-loaded folding ones which had folded when I stood up, thus I fell on my ass while carrying my camera and holding Charlie, but it’s embarrassing so I won’t mention it).

When we got back to the room, the dogs crashed. I’ve never seen Charlie so tired – she could hardly lift her head up off the carpet, and farted in a desultory manner, which is not normal behaviour. We were a bit tired as well and I had a few minutes of a lie-down while Jamie read – we had to wait till 7pm for dinner.

Seemingly moments later it was dinner time, so we drove back over to the train station, and more particularly, Il Pollio (or something Italian like that) for pizza. Oddly, both of us were so exhausted that neither of us felt like having any wine. We did, however, manage to get through a litre and a half of water with our pizzas. Impressively dehydrated, I’d say. Probably caused for once by exercise, rather than the previous night at the pub.

Despite the somewhat late start for dinner, we were in bed with the lights out by half nine. We felt old and sad, but we ARE old and sad, so whatever.


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