As I'm tired and falling asleep the night before a walk, I often feel unsettled about a part of the journey ahead: the emptiness of a huge ridge-top field, or the darkness of a plantation wood. Last night I went to sleep thinking about the bad-tempered cows and horses I might encounter in the New Forest.
Today's walk started in Downton. I left the village south, then followed the Avon Valley Path southeast to Woodfalls, where I entered the New Forest. I cut through a dark wood called Tinney's Firs. I saw yews and holly growing vertically up, ivy down, and beech leaves fanning out horizontally. The ground was like sponge - thick with leaf litter and decaying logs - and felt like it might suddenly give way. The canopy above was dense, and the sun shining through was so white and stringy that I kept trying to wipe it away from my face like a cobweb or a hair.
I walked out of the words through Lover (which rhymes with Dover) and down Black Lane into the woods around Hamptworth Lodge. I left the path just briefly to explore a short section of an old holloway that had grown over. I left the woods and followed the lane to a thatched, 18th century pub called the Cuckoo at Hamptworth.
The Cuckoo was great. I had a stout, a cider, and a packet of crisps, and a man called George gave me two roasted chestnuts that had been foraged from the woods. I sat with him and he told me a story that I wrote down immediately when I left the pub, so I could keep it in his words as much as possible. In a thick West Country accent:
There used to be a fucking great big walnut tree out the front of my 'ouse. Belonged to the farmer. He 'ad a brick on a chain and every year 'e'd throw the brick up into the boughs. I says to 'im one day: What d'you do that for then? 'e says: Gotta bruise the tree to get a good crop of walnuts. This tree is fucking covered in them every year. 'e says: Now I bruise the tree, when I die, the tree'll die too. An' I think: Don't be so fucking daft. Anyway, 'bout 15 years later 'e dies. The very next day, that fucking walnut tree is lying on the ground.
George also gave me two recipes:
Get a sweet jar, an' fill it with blackberries and sugar. Leave it til Christmas an you'll 'ave a bloody good liqueur. Another one you can do - you'll like this - it's called a forty-niner. You put 49 cloves into an orange, put the orange in a sweet jar, cover it with 49 sugar cubes, and fill the jar with brandy. Put it under the 'edge for 49 days, and if you can eat the orange after that you'll be a fucking good fella.
From the Cuckoo, I walked south, down the lane and through Franchises Wood to the open heathland the other side. This was the wildest part of my walks so far. Without hedges and fences, the land felt open and endless. The ground was mostly grass and heather. Where gorse bushes sprung up, holly trees seemed to follow, forming little groves. Here I got a first glimpse of the free-roaming cows, rustling in the gorse a few metres away.
I walked across the high ground - passing close enough to plenty of ponies and cows - and down in the valley to ford the Ditchend Brook. I was surprised and heartened to see how the cows and ponies sat and stood together, as though they were one and the same.
If I'd continued south at the brook, I'd have walked through an area called Burnt Balls, followed by Long Bottom. Instead I dog-legged northwest towards Godshill and Sandy Balls.
On a footpath through the woods at Sandy Balls, I caught a glimpse of the Avon Valley below, and I felt truly overwhelmed by its beauty. I walked down into Fordingbridge, where I had a pint of bitter shandy and a pint of water. Then I went to the Coop and bought a bottle of brandy and a bag of oranges, which I accidentally threw at a sleeping man on the bus back to Salisbury.
I don't have a hedge, so my forty-niner is sitting in the living room, beneath a money tree.
- Downton
- Woodfalls
- Tinney's Firs
- Lover
- Hamptworth
- Franchises Woods
- Telegraph Hill
- Leaden Hall
- Ditchend Bottom
- Godshill
- Sandy Balls
- Criddlestyle
- Fordingbridge