Ponies on the main road

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Just back from a weekend down in the New Forrest, we set off Friday evening arriving by train into Brockenhurst about 9. Our B&B was award winning, but probably for service, certainly not for space. We were in the smallest room, but nice and cosy. I had a bit of a cough thing going on so probably woke up the entire place the following morning. We were treated to a local full English breakfast, veggie in my case. Stuffed full of local fare we headed out to hire a bike, side stepping all the horse poo. There were actually horses running up and down the main road, tehehe, they own the place. We managed to hire an excellent mountain bike and headed off. We thought we had gone the wrong way after trying to follow a trail we had been given to follow so turned around. So we ended up following our noses around the national park. It is a stunning place, lots of different areas; moors, tall trees, forest. There were ponies and horses prancing around and lots of locals picnicking. We managed to find our way to a main town and directions to the pub we were looking for. The pub was lovely and it was heaving, we sat in the sun and enjoyed a bite to eat. There were heaps of cyclists around - it is certainly the thing to do, and good since only mild hills. On the way back to down we managed to see some wild deer roaming around, so were done for the day after that sighting. The following morning, we got into a bit of a pickle, the main aim of the weekend was for me to run the New Forest ½ marathon. It kind felt like it was doomed from the start given I had been sick all week. We arrived at the train station to find that engineering works hadn’t finished on time so there was a 2hr delay. Not idea given the run started in 40mins. We raced back to the B&B and called a cab, it took some time to arrive as the roads had already started to close. We made it to the start just as we heard the start time had been extended by 10mins, it would seem a few others had run into the same train delays, whew.
The run was lovely, it was a beautiful day the sun was shining, it was a great course through the national park (only a few hills) and through some cute towns, one called Tip Toe. That afternoon we enjoyed what is probably the last of the summer weather in a local pub.
Photos

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