Many of us will be looking to holiday in the UK this summer. Don’t worry if the attractions remain closed though as there are heaps of things to see and do in this beautiful pocket of England on the south coast.
Self-catering is the obvious choice to kick off your shoes and chill in plenty of space and have the privacy of your own garden. If you choose a pretty New Forest cottage in the woods, you’ll be surrounded by birdsong, free-roaming ponies, and nature. Or, choose a New Forest cottage by the coast – some are just metres from the beach!
A lot of the area’s pubs, restaurants and eateries offer delivery and takeaway menus, and many may be fully open by the time you take your holiday. But there’s no chance you’ll be going hungry if you pop into one of the New Forest’s farm shops laden with local produce and home-made dishes to pop in the oven for a quick and easy dinner.
Now is the time to think back to good-old-fashioned holidays from our childhood and find things to do which are often free, fun and create lasting memories.
Let’s start with the New Forest National Park…
There are 220 square miles of woods, purple heather heathlands, rivers, ponds, and wildflower meadows to explore either on foot or by bike. Cycle rental providers are open and can provide routes and suggestions of where to go using over 100 miles of dedicated cycle tracks. If you’re walking, take a picnic and head off along one of the many trails and find yourself a secret spot by a stream or atop one of the small hills and take in the gorgeous landscape dotted with the forest’s famous ponies, donkeys, cattle, and deer.
Talking of deer, they are timid animals, so if you don’t spot one, drive over to Bolderwood near Brockenhurst. There’s a viewing platform at the top of a meadow where rangers leave food for a heard of fallow deer. You’ll find a good size car park, picnic tables, a BBQ area and large expanse of lawn kept short and neat by ponies nibbling it, as they do with any patch of grass in the forest.
Go on a treasure hunt!
Another fun thing to do would be to go Geocaching. If you haven’t tried it before, it’s like a treasure hunt using GPS on your phone. Before you set off, log on and register on the Geocaching website, then navigate the GPS coordinates and hunt for the hidden ‘Geocache’ container. The website will tell you all about the sort of things the containers hold, and you can trade nick-knacks or sweets etc. if you want to.
The New Forest is full of heritage and history
Take a look at the churches and famous graves in the New Forest. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of the world’s most famous fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes, is buried in Minstead Church. The much-celebrated nurse Florence Nightingale is buried in St Margaret’s churchyard at East Wellow, and who hasn’t read ‘Alice in Wonderland’? The inspiration behind author Lewis Carroll’s ‘Alice’ was the daughter of family friends from Lyndhurst called Alice Liddell. Her grave is in the town’s churchyard. You can find out more about New Forest authors in our Famous Authors and Books of The New Forest blog.
Award-winning beaches, clifftop walks, castles, and coastline
Spend your holidays splashing about in the sea and building sandcastles on the award-winning sandy beaches of Avon and Highcliffe Castle. For a change of scene, don sturdy shoes and take a clifftop walk to Barton on Sea where you can hunt for fossils such as gastropods and shark teeth. Further along, is Milford on Sea and the gateway to a one-and-a-half mile pebble spit leading to King Henry VIII’s coastal fortress, Hurst Castle.
You can have hours of fun crabbing whatever the weather. Local shops sell crab lines for a couple of pounds and a pack of bacon for bait. There are two particularly good locations in the area – Lymington Quay and Keyhaven harbour.
At the far eastern point of the National Park is Lepe Country Park, which has a play area for smaller children and a large lawn for picnics and ball games. The park’s shoreline is about a mile across the Solent from the Isle of Wight. To the east is Southampton Water which is a hive of activity with huge vessels navigating their way to and from the famous docks. To the left of the park are the remains and defences from the World War II D-Day invasions, with plaques describing the role the area played during the war.
Take a look at our full portfolio of New Forest Cottages and enjoy the simple pleasures of the great outdoors later this summer.