New forest textlab12/25/2023 ![]() The upper reaches of Bartley Water to the west of Ashurst, or Highland Water west of Lyndhurst, twist and turn through the woods, deep channels overhung by trees, while the upper reaches of the Beaulieu River have a fringe of trees, but head right out over the heaths and bogs. Or leave the trail altogether and follow a winding stream into the woods, sit on the bank and wait for a kingfisher, or possibly a mandarin duck, to pass by. Head out on the vast expanse of the open heathland, away from the roads, and you’ll have them to yourself – just you and the larks and stonechats. ![]() I have often found myself lost in a quiet spot deep among the trees, staring into the orange eye of a goshawk or face to face with a secretive muntjac. Walk quietly, and walk slowly: you will see much more this way. By doing this you will quickly find yourself alone in the woods with the wildlife. Take a trail into the woods, and when paths diverge choose the path less travelled. You don’t have to walk far for the number of people to thin out. Many visitors stay in the forest’s well-equipped villages, or in the vicinity of the car parks by noted beauty spots such as Bolderwood and the Rhinefield Ornamental Drive, or the tourist attractions of Exbury Gardens or Bucklers Hard.īut it is easy to get away from the crowds. There is also a fantastic network of cycle paths, with bicycles for hire in the larger villages. Having a car is not vital there are good rail and bus links, and I conducted my year of visits entirely using public transport. More than 200 square miles of the forest have been a national park since 2005, and attract a lot of visitors, especially in the summer holidays, as they are more accessible to large population centres than many of our parks. This is a place of superlatives: the greatest concentration of ancient trees in western Europe three-quarters of its remaining valley mires – all drained away elsewhere to make way for farmland the greatest diversity of lichens and fungi three-quarters of Britain’s dragonfly species and a place of last resort for specialised birds such as Dartford warblers and woodlarks, hobbies and honey buzzards. It is rich in species of plants and animals that are in steep decline elsewhere, and in some cases absent. Its three key habitats, of pasture woodland, lowland heath and valley mire, have all but vanished over most of the country. Centuries ago, before the Enclosure Acts, a third of England was common land and would have looked much more like this than it does today.Īnd yet while this is a working landscape, it is incredibly welcoming to wildlife. It is in effect one huge fenceless communal farm, where commoners (residents of the forest who still practise the ancient “rights of common”, such as the right to pasture livestock) graze ponies and cattle – and pigs too, in autumn. This is by no means an entirely natural landscape, though it has changed little since it was first designated as a hunting forest by the invading Normans 1,000 years ago, and possibly for much longer still. ![]() It is rich in species of plants and animals that are in steep decline elsewhere, and in some cases absent In all, I visited about 30 times, an exercise that I most conveniently completed just a week or two before the first lockdown began. ![]() I determined that over the course of a year I would spend as much time as I could in the forest, revisiting my childhood haunts and beyond, and recording what I found. Yet finally, a lifetime later, and with my own children growing up, I began to feel the call of the past. When I left home as a teenager, my travels took me all over the country, and the world, but never back home. A generation later they were evicted from the forest, most ending up in the newly built council estates of the neighbouring cities. Gypsies lived peaceably alongside commoners in the forest for some 500 years, until the 1920s when they were rounded up and compelled to live in a small number of designated compounds. One side of my family originated from here they were New Forest Gypsies. A tranquil pool on a countryside walk in the New Forest.
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