February 28th, 2022. Two years to the day since the last time I set foot in an office for work. We’re in Brockenhurst, Hampshire, in the middle of the New Forest.

We’d booked breakfast for 8.30am. Turned up promptly and ordered a full English without beans. The food takes a while to arrive, but that’s because rather than a ton of everything on the go at once, the kitchen cooks everything to order.

Our plan for the day was to stay on foot: Helen wanted a break from driving, but anyway, according to the forecast it was to be the driest day of the week and thus best for walking. We got our proper footwear on, retrieved the poles from the car, and headed up through the town centre - stopping to note that on Tuesday there would be a pancake race taking place - and headed towards the “forest”.

Then, we doubled back. Oof, that breakfast went right through us. Apologies for the hint of too much information, but the fact that we went back through the town centre is pertinent to the story because, hello, there are donkeys on the high street now.

There are four, but a friendly local across the street tells us there should be six. She’s taking pics and just generally enjoying watching them have a scratch on the bench - says they startled her by coming down the alley next to the shop she’d just emerged from. Lived there all her life and still not bored of seeing them, but knows to give them a wide berth - they are apparently a bit temperamental. (Also, yes, they aren’t mules, but I’m too proud of the subtitle to care about its accuracy)

Our second attempt at leaving the town was more successful. We did seek sanctuary in church grounds in order to let donkey number five pass without hassling us. It looked very determined.

The location of donkey number six remains unknown.

Walking a path alongside the big road, we came off where the OS map told us there was a footpath, and climbed over a stile into some stables. We were implored in absolutely no uncertain terms to NOT WORRY THE LIVESTOCK.

Past the stables we’re alongside a stream and the path is really quite narrow. At the end is another stile, and we enter a field in which there’s what appears to be a horse family - two adults and a foal. They are standing really quite near the next gate and I’m a bit intimidated. Beyond the gate there are two more horses, who couldn’t give two shits about us.

Emerging from that field past a chicken coup, we’re on a gravel track between a few houses and a rogue dog comes up to say hello. The owner doesn’t appear for a good few minutes, telling us this wasn’t the route she wanted to take but apparently her opinion isn’t what matters.

Then we climb a hill. I mean, I say “hill”, and the map says hill, but now that we live half way up a right big hill I think I’m OK in saying it’s not really a hill. Barely a mound. Like, it’s a small slope. In fact, at the end of the day my watch registered that I’d walked up the equivalent of just TWO flights of stairs all day. For comparison, on Saturday I managed 60-odd without even leaving my property.

This bit of the New Forest is a bit nondescript really. It’s heathland, not forest. Lots of gorse and stuff. Very flat, like I said. Helen was really quite annoyed by the lack of trees, although we did occasionally see a couple. It was nice of this pony to frame itself so well.

Our intent was to do a loop up through Ober Heath, where there is a possibility of seeing some red deer. After crossing the road we’d left earlier and walking past a lot more gorse and disappointing tumuli, we actually saw two non-red deer - roe, we think - running across our path at full pelt.

Honestly it’s not very picturesque around there, certainly not when overcast. Things got prettier once we’d navigated via car parks straddling another road and found Ober Water.

Also, as you can now see, we’d found some forest. Huzzah. Alas, we saw no further deer, but the New Forest ponies were out in force.

This one looked heavily pregnant. Everything looked like a real effort, and she couldn’t be bothered to try and rid her tail of the branch that was tangled up in it.
On the other side of the forest things went flat and boring again.

Conditions underfoot became treacherous, with extreme amounts of mud. For a while we could avoid the worst by skirting around the edges, but then came the huge quagmire that started the worst period of the walk. A couple heading in the opposite direction to us told us to expect more of the same, although we were going a slightly different way to them.

In the end, we went a very different way to the route we wanted to take. It was no longer just mud, but outright flooding we had to contend with.

We trampled through the heather when we could, but even amongst all that there was loads of mud and standing water. Eventually we made it into the forest, but things didn’t really get any better. By now we weren’t on any proper path or route, but we knew there was a stream somewhere around here with a path next to it.

It stopped being fun round about here. We found the stream, and apparently the ancient site of some old hunting lodge - current status: a big puddle - but it was a perilous route to reach the footbridge. Clambering over fallen trees, sinking in mud, doubling back repeatedly when things weren’t passable. Just really unpleasant. Add that to the fact that Helen was flagging a bit - she does far fewer miles in her legs weekly than I - the bench by the bridge was a welcome break.

From here back to Brockenhurst was much easier. A big proper wide path, albeit still requiring a lot of zigzagging to avoid the worst of the mud, led us to the edge of another heath - on which the longest straightest path around took us back to the edge of town.

A mishap with my watch stopped me from recording the full track, but we reckon it was about 14km in total. A decent walk. Poor Helen was absolutely drained, and we were both starving, so we nipped back to our room to swap our extravagantly muddy trousers for some less muddy ones, and headed to the Snakecatcher pub for lunch. Hurrah, pub lunch! What I needed was a pint, a big fat burger, and a load of gobby sparrows.

And, well, that was it really. It started raining as we walked back to the room, and didn’t stop for the subsequent 30-odd hours. There were naps, there was imperial stout, and there was a lot of BBC iPlayer - Orion (amazing documentary about a fake Elvis), something about Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan, and then a lot of episodes of Mandy. This trip is all about the days not the evenings.
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