Acres Down to Lucas Castle

7th April 2009

The east side of the A31 corridor today.

Ever since I misjudged the timing of my previous walk to Lucas Castle back in the autumn I've wanted to come back and do the whole thing in daylight. Today I did, following a slightly different and reversed route.

The sun shone fitfully out of a sky full of bubble-clouds eventually becoming quite overcast until late afternoon when the clouds fled and the sun beamed down on everything. Through it all blew a bracing wind that still has a chill edge to it.

I met a lovely lady just returned from walking a Westie on Acres Down. She walks the dog for someone else and also "grooms" for another lady who carriage drives a pair of ponies. The lady I was talking to also drives her own pony. She told me how lovely it was up on the Down. In all the times I have come to Acres Down car park I have never been up there. Today, my route would bring me back over the Down on my way back.

Having said our goodbyes, I headed off, not into Highland Water as I always have done but back round past Acres Down House and up to Stonnard Wood, from where I achieved a small ambition and followed the green fingerpost declaring "Murray's Passage" down and across Withybed Bottom. The valley made a lovely funnel for the wind.

More windy encounters up the far side of the valley where the path comes out at the unnamed lakes near Andrews Mare car park. Another path runs SW to NE past the lakes and SW was my direction following the rolling English "road" down from the lakes, up to Lucas Castle, down from Lucas Castle, fording a couple of streams and up Mogshade Hill. On the way, I saw tractor tracks that came from nowhere and went nowhere; there was about four feet of tractor track and then, nothing, just undamaged ground (??)

Near the top of Mogshade Hill I crossed to another path which eventually returns to Stonnard Wood. I wanted to check out the ford and footbridge in the "bottom". Across the footbridge my way went uphill and then right through an open gate into Highland Water Inclosure - how could it not?

I changed my mind about my path a couple of times in here which meant I could get off the cycle track and explore along more interesting grassy tracks. My choice turned out to be enhancements of an already beautiful walk. Eventually I came back to the cycle track for a little way in Holmhill Inclosure before passing through a gate and heading up a woodland path to the top of Acres Down.

The view from here is breathtaking, by Hampshire standards. This time for the view south. There are swathes of New Forest stretched out and yet the horizon is dominated first and foremost by the great Downs of the Isle of Wight, the entire east-west stretch of which is, whether by accident or design, framed on either side by the trees of the New Forest on higher ground. West of the Island you can also quite clearly see Sway Tower rising up like a pointing finger into the sky.

From the east side of the Down there is a view quite clearly towards and over Southampton to the downlands that march behind it.

Now I wonder at myself again that in all the times I've been to Acres Down, this is the first time I've actually gone up it.