Day 7

Only a month later and I can't properly remember all the places we went to on this day (and the brilliant sunlight has removed most of the highlighter pen from the road atlas), but we did go down to Beaulieu and a beautiful place it is too. 

I remembered visiting the motor museum perhaps more than 35 years ago.

I can still remember some of the cars we saw. 

I can also remember my mother and sister being very much less than fascinated with it all.

We drove down the east side of the Beaulieu estuary and fairly randomly towards Lepe. Pointing out some hills in the distance,

"Where d'you think that is?", I asked, trying not to sound as if I knew a big secret.

"The sea's just down here".

Disoriented Jo was genuinely surprised to find that we'd been looking at the Isle of Wight, but she did believe me once we got right down to The Solent.

On to Lymington (from where one can catch the costly ferry to Yarmouth, IoW). 

A very smart and nautically bustlesome little town Lymington appears to be. Housing looked massively expensive. Yacht clubs, blazers (and all that b*ll*cks), I suspect, in abundance.

That evening we talked about next day going to see my uncle, Philip (Mitchell), (yeah, Phil Mitchell, really), in Bournemouth. 

Here are some New Forest campsites.

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Day 8

It was overcast, a travelling day we agreed. For five or six days Jo had been gallantly putting up with a most wintry cold. (Hadn't I mentioned that?). She said I wasn't going to like this, but she wanted to go home. So I can't explain properly how it was that we were soon on the M27 heading east and then not enjoying nearly as much as I'd anticipated what turned out to be an astonishingly greasy cooked breakfast at the services. Motorbike cops in leather trousers and non-uniform teeshirts were breakfasting there too. Look at that older one, you can tell he doesn't do a stroke of work and the others just tolerate him.     Chichester was busy. We bought a rug for the hall, a hippyish necklace for Jo and walked along two quarters of the old walls (smarter than York's, I thought) and whatever your religion(?), Chichester Cathedral is an impressive building.

Bognor Regis, Littlehampton, Worthing and into Brighton with my head full of Quadrophenia.

Brighton, what a disappointment. It all looked so tatty as we cruised along the prom. We knew there was a Caravan Club campsite somewhere near, but noticing not a single signpost for any campsites at all.....  we were soon rolling along the white cliffs...... and into Peacehaven (an extraordinary, and scruffy-looking, place it was too), before we realised for certain that things should have been going better than they were. And that it might take a lot of effort to improve them. 

I'd assumed that we would just come across a reasonable campsite and that next day we'd look around The Lanes, at some stage head up to Horsham and perhaps Karen, my FriendsReunited friend last seen c. 1974, would be at home and make us a brew (that's Northern for cap o' tea). 

The sun on this eastward journey had burnt my right arm.

We stopped in a farmy-barny-conference centre in a country park and had coffee and massively expensive cake.

A decision was reached. 

My hero!, I heard Jo say (in her head, but I heard it). 

Skirting Eastbourne (and whilst doing so jettisoning the water tank - that very final act), we headed slowly up to the M25 and onto it, watching the traffic crawling in the opposite direction.

A little south of Oxford we put in £30 of non-Esso diesel and all but the fumes had gone by the time we arrived home seven hours after leaving Eastbourne.

But we'll be back!

020305: Last great wildwood of England wins protection.

By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor, The Independent.

If ever an ancient wilderness needed protection, this was it. Squeezed between Southampton and its docks and oil refineries on the one side, and Bournemouth and its mushrooming conurbation on the other, the New Forest has increasingly been subject to fierce pressures from development and tourism.

But yesterday those who love the last great wildwood of southern England were celebrating, as the New Forest finally became a national park - England's first for nearly 50 years.

The 220 square miles of woodland, pasture and open heaths, in places unchanged since medieval times, now has the highest level of legal protection against inappropriate development, as it becomes the 12th, and smallest, member of the national park "family" in England and Wales.

The designation ends more than 15 years of squabbling over the future of a landscape which is as rich in wildlife as it is breathtaking in beauty.

Two attempts to have it declared a National Park failed under the Tory government in the early 1990s, partly because of Whitehall in-fighting. The decision to go ahead in principle was eventually made under Labour in 1998, but it has taken until now to put the administrative arrangements into effect.

This is partly because of extensive consultations with local people, landowners and businesses, and partly because the forest, originally established as William the Conqueror's hunting preserve in 1079, already has its own administration.

The New Forest Committee, which represents organisations working to conserve the forest's special character, including several local councils, is being wound up; but the ancient Court of Verderers, which represents 500 commoners, will continue in partnership with the national park. The commoners are local people who hold ancient grazing and forestry rights, and still turn out their cattle, sheep, pigs and ponies to graze. (There are about 3,000 New Forest ponies.).

What the New Forest now gets is all the panoply of modern protection for important wildlife sites and landscapes. It will have a clearly defined legal boundary. From 1 April it will have its own 22-member planning authority. It will have a management plan for the future. It already has a website, less than a week old (www.newforestnpa.gov.uk), and it has an interim chief executive, Susan Carter, until a national park officer is appointed. But not yet, alas, a headquarters building.

Most important, it gets legal safekeeping. From now on it will be verging on impossible for a major infrastructure development, such as a new road scheme or a big factory, to be sited within the forest, and the reality of this was widely recognised yesterday.

"The formal status of the New Forest National Park heralds a new chapter in the protection of sensitive landscapes in south-east England," said Donna O'Brien of the Council for National Parks pressure group, which said it was delighted at the news. Alun Michael, the Minister of State for Rural Affairs, said the forest would take its place "alongside areas such as Dartmoor and the Lake District in the first rank of our protected areas." The potential pressures on the New Forest are very real, from tourism to development. About 15 million people live within day-trip range, and already about 20 million people visit the New Forest every year.

In the past five years the forest has also faced the threat of a new port for container ships at Dibden Bay on Southampton water, but after a long planning process this was turned down by the Government last year.

The special nature of the forest is evident to anyone who visits. It is among the most wildlife-rich areas in Britain because of its patchwork of habitats, from lush oakwoods, to lowland heath, to bog. Perhaps its most valuable character is its continuing sense of wilderness, because of the fact that the soil is poor and so most of it has never been farmed.

The New Forest may be joined later this year by another national park in lowland England - the South Downs. It has already been provisionally designated as such, and the Government will decide whether or not to confirm the designation later this year.

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