Yesterday we visited our relations who live in the area and joined them for coffee. It’s hard to say the exact relationship and I fear my sister will correct me because I am bound to be wrong…but I think…my mothers maternal grandmothers sisters child’s, child …I might have missed a generation out but they’ve always been known as Cousin Simon and Sheila to me and Simon is the son of Great Aunty Lily…although I don’t think she was an aunt, I think she was perhaps my grandmothers younger cousin !!!!! Regardless, they’ve always been family and it was lovely catching up with them…thank you for the coffee.
Today we headed off into the forest…a grey day with the sun occasionally breaking through, and thankfully no rain. We went through Sway to Horseshoe Bottom Carpark. Where we sat and enjoyed the views… plenty of horses….. there was also a man wandering about with a takeaway coffee..what a strange thing to do we thought. He kept bending and picking things up from the short grass, occasionally kneeling and once or twice sitting and still picking things up and putting in his pocket…..we watched him for some time. A car pulled up further along from us and a couple of men, father and son age, alighted. We were interested to see that they strapped a two wheeled contraption on to one of their dogs and we soon realised the dog didn’t have the use of its hind legs….. they set off across the grassland for a walk ….they stopped at the other strange man and conversed …out of his pocket came another open coffee cup and he showed the newcomers what he had been collecting… They all moved off and ‘curiosity was killing the cat’ , so I hopped out of the car and went to see what the man had been picking up….tiny mushrooms…I suspect magic mushrooms …my Miss Marple’s sleuthing had it all worked out!!! I was pleased when a New Forest Parks van pulled in and he disappeared..after all he was corrupting this sacred place where nature, heaven and earth are all at peace. We had coffee. Enjoyed watching the ponies and dog walkers traversing this area of outstanding beauty.

We decided to go deeper into the forest and continued on new routes until we crossed under the A31 again and headed towards Bramshaw . This time we didn’t see any pigs. Although we did see a lot of ponies and we went through some great villages with shops, the names of which really appealed to me !!! We stopped for our lunch and watched a pair of Wagtails and some Meadow Pipits playing in the puddles.

Deciding we would head for home we turned down another very narrow lane in the direction of Nomansland…. What a wonderful surprise …firstly a pig with two piglets and then another huge pig…as we went around the blind bend there in the road were about 10 really young pink piglets and their sows foraging in the hedgerow. Beyond them was a herd of donkeys blocking the road……what a lovely sight. As we could go nowhere, due to the road block , we spent several minutes watching and enjoying these animals freely eating and snuffling and grunting…it was superb.

We eventually had to move as the livestock moved onto the verges. Our return continued and we took the beautiful route past the Rhinefield Hotel and back through Brockenhurst….John got his train ‘fix’ as we waited at the level-crossing.

We got back to the house in time to put the supper in the oven. Another really lovely peaceful day, we saw 223 ponies wandering freely and 5 with riders …….Nature at its very finest.