Fritham to Godshill

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The sun glinted from the blue sky, a sharp wind blew from the north and it was cold enough that many of the large water holes in the New Forest had a film of ice. There were even ice crystals in the grass in the deeper shade. Nevertheless, swaddled in three layers beneath a good fleece jacket and thermals under combats, with woolly socks and a woolly hat, I was toasty and got really quite warm during the afternoon as I tramped about the New Forest for three and a half hours today. Even my hands, although I'd forgotten my gloves, stayed surprisingly warm.

The scenery was about as varied as it gets in the New Forest starting from a tree-lined and muddy car park, past an open lake called Iron Wells Chalybeate and through a brake of trees out into green lawns dotted with faded heather and soggy underfoot. Over hills, through "bottoms" and out on to the copper bracken plain edged with the dark eaves of Islands Thorns Inclosure. An army helicopter zoomed low over my head, chuttered into the south, and a few moments later came round again from the east and across westward behind me, where it dived into the shallow valley of Black Gutter Bottom. I didn't see it again after that. Somewhere northward someone was shooting things.

Heading towards Leaden Hall I was passed by a lady on a tall grey gelding. I commented "That's a lovely way to spend the morning", to which she replied, laughing "It would be if the cold didn't make my face ache." Leaden Hall is a strange area of sand and gravel that looked like it should be under several inches of water to form a lake. The water must just sink into the ground here. Although fairly soggy it was firm enough underfoot. From here across Little Cockley Plain and down Cockley Hill through little groves of trees, across a shallow bridge over a stream where I tried to wash the mud off my boots, and up to Godshill. I found a pleasant spot with a good view and had lunch.

From my lunchspot, I walked along Godshill Ridge and then down towards Pitts Wood Inclosure on rutted green tracks and fording the stream again. There are no gates or fences to the Inclosure and it looks like the trees have been taken back so that the stream that used to run through the Inclosure now runs in front of it. There is a wide walk up through the Inclosure, today covered in brown oak leaves which covered a soggy secret. This lovely-looking walk was like a mire under the leafy carpet. Further on however, the mud gave way to good gravel track heading upwards and soon joined the cycle track along the top of Hampton Ridge. As I walked up through Pitts Wood there were some semi-wild cattle complaining loudly about something somewhere to the north of the Inclosure. They didn't half go on about it, too.

As the clouds began to roll down from the north and the sun to fall into the west, the track wound down into Amberwood Inclosure. All I heard was the faint thrumming of a distant aeroplane and then only birds. I spotted a doe watching me from the trees and managed to get a photograph of her before she bounded away.

And so back to the car park after a lovely walk full of variation and surprise.