Weather: Sunny
Distance: 22 km (
miles) Total Distance: miles
Beaulieu is only some four miles from Brockenhurst and since we
were renting a cottage on the road to Beaulieu I decided the best idea was to hitch and
leave Margaret with the car. I had no trouble getting lifts even though it was
only 7 o'clock in the morning. The first was from a man going to work in a saw-mill
in the forest and after he dropped me off I got a lift from a taxi on his way
to pick up school children. I walked
through the village and over the river and then saw a sad sight - a cat which
had obviously just been run over and was not going to make it. I tried knocking on a few houses but since it
was so early still I failed to get a reply.
All I could therefore do was to move the poor creature onto the bank and
let the owners cope with it when they found it.
Just past that there was a footpath marked as going down
a driveway into a wooded area with large houses on either side. I decided to
try it and hoped I would not end up retracing my tracks. I saw my first sight
of deer - three small creatures trapped inside a cabbage field! The path was than signed off the road and
into the woods, a pleasant path and one of the most pleasant paths of the day
and one of the only paths I took all the week through the forest itself. I saw
rabbits and snook up on another baby deer before getting onto the road again.
The next stretch was a long road section all the way to
Exbury, past the Exbury gardens and then on minor roads to the coast. The first
section of the coast proper for the day was a slippery narrow path on the muddy
foreshore. Then there was a section where some house-holders were obviously
trying to make the foreshore their own and had erected fences everywhere. At
Lepe things improved and there was a proper promenade and a car park for the
country park. It was still too early for the park information centre to be open. I had hoped to to ask about access along the next bit of foreshore.
The next section was OK for a while but then there was a
section along what appeared to be a very nice beach - but one sign said private
- Nature Reserve. Reassuring myself that there was no such thing as private
land between low and high tide I pressed on. The alternative would have been a
track inland along not too interesting roads. A one stage a large country house
overlooked the beach. My guess is that what had happened was that the country
house owners thought that the best chance they had of keeping the tourists off
their beach was to give it to a nature group and ask them to restrict access. Very devious.
I stopped in a little cafe at Calshot for refreshments and
to get out of the sun for a while. It had warmed up a lot by now and was
another scorcher. I talked to a couple of locals in there about access over the
next section. Calshot is a pebbly beach
with a large collection of beach huts. I went to the end of the peninsular
around some MOD property, a lighthouse and an adventure centre before heading
back inland. A dumper truck driver stopped and asked me if I was lost - I was
just trying to reassure myself I was keeping to my rules of keeping as close to
the coast as possible.
Heading up the first section of Southampton Water, I now
had the shipping to keep me company. The path was well marked and went outside
a power station. I came to the hamlet of
Ashlett and stopped for a beer in the Jolly Roger, Boddingtons - much nicer than yesterday.
Fawley was less picturesque and since I was early to meet
Margaret and I still had some energy left, I did the circuit of the town, via
the church grounds before meeting her. I came up against the giant ESSO oil
refinery which blocks the next section of the coast - the best thing that can
therefore be said for it is that it is not all that visible from the roads.
After meeting the family we went back to Calshot and the
boys had a fairly good time on the beach - Gareth being easier to handle on the
stones than on the sand - less going in his mouth. Once it got too hot we decided the coolest
place to go was probably back home - we stopped off on the way at a place in
the forest. I think this is where Margaret picked up one of her large insect
bites off a giant ant!
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