Blogs from New Forest, Hampshire, England, United Kingdom, Europe - page 2

A few photos of our recent camping trip to the New Forest in Hampshire. The weather was good so we headed for a small campsite in the forest called Matley Wood. It has no facilities except for running water so only campers with a chemical toilet can set up there. Thanks to this, there were plenty of pitches available and we had a bit of room to stretch out. Best of all, the site is a starting point for some beautiful easy bike and walking trails. We put our bikes to good use by spending the afternoon peddling through the forest. I had heard that the New Forest was full of ponies so I was looking forward to seeing a few ponies off in the distance. ‘full of ponies’ turned out to be a bit of ... read more

I arrived in Bournemouth bright and early, full of enthusiasm and determined to find a place for the night straight away, so I could leave my bags and go exploring. Unfortunately my expectations were a leetle too high. The bored guy at the Tourist Information Centre in the bus station told me straight away that the Backpacker’s limited opening hours were the reason I had not been able to reach them on the phone the night before. Conveniently, they are open for a whole hour every day. Between five and six in the evening. Gee. It was nine thirty in the morning. There was no way I was going to wait til five o’clock to find out if Bournemouth Backpackers had a bed - I wanted to have a good day wandering the New Forest, not ... read more

We had all been hanging out for a holiday that didn’t involve walking through the concrete jungle of another European city, so we all jumped at the chance of going mountain biking in the New Forest, on England’s South Coast. However, our first mission was getting there... I don’t think even one car load managed to get there without getting lost… and then we had to pitch our tents in the dark. To be honest, I kinda enjoyed it. I hadn’t been camping in ages, so revelled in the night time challenge. However, the next morning we were a lot more serious and organised, (thanks to a mean cooked breakfast from Team A), while Team B went off to hire the mountain bikes for the day’s adventure. And us, Team E - well, we sat and ... read more