New Frustration

Between Coronavirus lockdowns we wanted to go somewhere that didn't include a hotel. The New Forest isn't an obvious choice for a road trip, but it's very pretty and could be done on a single tank of petrol.

The Nova Foresta was created by William the Conqueror in 1079 when he removed the pesky villagers getting in the way of his hunting. It's been Crown Land for the last 900 years, proving once again that the English have trouble understanding the concept of "new." In another example of its Englishness it is managed by, among others, Hampshire Council, Wiltshire Council, the New Forest District Council, the Highways Agency, Forestry England, the National Park Authority, the National Trust, the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust and the Verderers. All these organisations have worked together very effectively to ensure there's a rule against pretty much everything and specifically against driving a Nomad in the way it should be, leading to the New Forest question: does it have to be fast to be fun?

The route starts at Lyndhurst, which I hoped would be quiet on a cloudy Thursday but wasn't. We eased onto the one-way system, and eventually Beaulieu Road where we met our first cow blocking the road. There are ancient rights that allow locals to graze ponies, cows and pigs on the common land and, therefore, in the road. So we waited until she grew bored and wandered away.

And so it continued all the way to Beaulieu. If it wasn't a cow it was a pony, if it wasn't a pony it was a cyclist, if it wasn't a cyclist it was a motorhome. In more normal times we might have stopped at the motor museum, but not today. Instead we made for the old RAF Beaulieu site but the gate was shut with a notice warning of nesting birds, so fair enough. But we kept finding shut gates and blocked paths everywhere we went and it felt more like an exercise in containment than a welcome. Perhaps that's what it has to be with so many visitors, but those tracks are tempting and the Nomad should be classified as a pony and exempt from the rules. But it isn't so we took the narrower back roads to Boldre. Part way along Church Lane a right turn onto gravelled Thistle Lane leads to Royden Lane and back to Church Lane.

It must be said that for a forest road trip we were seeing remarkably few trees. The first two thirds of our route was across heathland, mainly because the few roads that go through a forest are congested. The heathland has good sightlines through corners, but perhaps that misses the point of a rare ecological habitat maintained by an ancient system of grazing that is under threat from rising house prices that stop anyone that might own a cow from being able to afford a property that has the rights to graze one. Anyway, after some nice runs across open land, we turned into Boldrewood Arboretum and got the trees. At the end of a wiggly road there was a big car park and I've never seen a place so packed and un-socially-distanced. Were they all there to see the 600 year old Knightwood Oak that survived the Great Storm of 1703? Probably not, it's a little underwhelming. We didn't stop for it either, and drove on to Emery Down to join the queue back to Lyndhurst.

And that's the New Forest in summer. Too much traffic and too many rules, some charming cows and ponies and much too much temptation to slip around one of those gates and onto the epic gravel tracks. And does it have to be fast to be fun? No, but it helps.

New Forest route for GPS