Wintery Walk

It was another frosty morning for our walk in the forest. This morning we began from Wood's Corner on the outskirts of Burley. Getting out early doors meant we beat the hordes, the empty parking spot felt old skool, since the Covid the forest footfall has exploded. Luckily most don't walk far from their cars or remain on the the main tracks, making it easy still to escape and find peace. There was no one about as we skirted the edge of Berry Woods taking in the view over White Moor Bottom; crossing Ridley Green the Mill Lawn Brook tributary running through there was frozen, not seen that in forever; Ridley wood's a lovely old wood set within an ancient earthwork, it's home to some fantastic old beeches, sadly many have been slighted by age and the elements in recent years; we passed Little Wood a clump crowning Ridley Plain before descending into Harvest Slade Bottom, a spookily quiet spot this morning, then up onto Backley Plain; past Soarley Beeches along the edge of Backley Enclosure and across Blackensford Bottom, from where the clump of Soarley Beeches looked like an hillfort in the distance...it's not; then it was the return stretch through the irregular mosaic woodlands of Beech Bed and South Oakley enclosures. 7 miles of New Forest winter loveliness. You can't beat it.

Harvest Slade

Today we walked in the company of the element water. This morning was the wettest walk we'd undertaken in the forest for a long time. The underlying geology of the New Forest means water isn't quickly absorbed, and the slowly drained ground easily becomes sodden. Ridley Plain is one of a chain of high plains which cut through the centre of the New Forest, even up here the surface was awash, water either flowing or standing. Where water was flowing, it was being drawn as if by magical force into Harvest Slade from every direction, through the bottom of the Slade an embryonic tributary Mill Lawn Brook forms and flows. 

Commoners' Passage

The forest can be a challenging landscape to navigate in the winter.  The plains, whether high or low, are for the most part waterlogged, and the hidden boggy hollows of this undulating world are thoroughly sodden. It's easy for your walk to turn into an arduous soggy trudge. The forest would be impassible without track-ways like 'Commoners' Passage', which would have been serving locals and travellers for centuries. It says on a commemorative plaque the track was restored in 2004 (you'd not have known), it just shows how such passages weather, as although the short causeway over the bog remains in fair condition, the track itself has been heavily degraded in places by countless walkers, riders, cyclists and ponies. On the ridge above, a well preserved, though robbed out, Bronze Age Round Barrow is testament to the history of human activity in the area, and the sanctity of these isolated wet places to our ancestors.  

Harvest Slade Bottom

Harvest Slade Bottom, a wetland valley and one of the headwaters of Mill Lawn Brook. Just one of the forests many hidden spots which has an eerie isolated beauty to it. You can understand why in the past landscapes like the forest’s were viewed as scary places filled with dangers, real and imagined, mythical beasts and strange unnatural forces. Today the hollow was nice, very still, with a certain peaceful tranquillity to it, though when shrouded and muffled by thick mists or in the midst of a storm these places will stir your primal fears...no matter how much you deny them.