Here they are, fallow deer pretty well hidden within a woodland environment.
That lens (and the wonderful free mini-tripod), was worth every penny. The deer were about 200m away.
Deer need trees.
We walked, (yes, I know...., again!), through the woodland surrounding the enclosure. It must have been about half a square mile in area. We saw the first of several groves of large holly trees in the New Forest all of which, curiously, had been sawn off at about 4' 6". What a damned mess - it looked to be some of the worst woodland management I've ever seen. The stumps stood there silver-shiny and looking at best like prehistoric standing stones.
Holly is excellent burning wood and I almost desperately wished I'd brought the chainsaw. That day I could have filled the van a dozen times.
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Nature Boy advises that
should you ever even suspect that you're about to be photographed
while eating an ice cream, you should firstly and always ensure that............
there's a
big lump of it on your top lip.
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Nearly all the non-major roads are subject to a 40mph restriction, which is good for dozy ponies and other wildlife, and for dozy tourists on a hot day.
It must be frustrating if you live or work locally.
Down a long unsurfaced road we found lunch at a pub and ate outdoors at a table so conveniently placed that my side of it was in the shade and Jo's was not, which suited us fine. It would take 12mths of summer heat for me to become acclimatized.
We ambled west then up the Avon to Fordingbridge (mainly because it's name sounds good).
We strolled around.
It seemed good.
In parts.
And it's a fine, fat, lazy river on the west bank of which, between the lips of a huge statue of that wild, promiscuous, proto-type hippie, early new age traveller and commune patriarch, Augustus John, someone had placed a cigarette butt.
I don't doubt it was a whole cigarette when it first went in.
Up Deadman Hill.
How bloody hot is it!
It's like last year in France.
But Hotter!
I'm reminded now of a Patterson cartoon sketch of a fraught and skinny cyclist standing next to a 6ft tall sapling which has about six leaves. The carton's called, Salisbury Plain in a Heatwave.
All day I'd had the sun visor down and been wearing the oik hat and shades, but we'd just turned south.......
Nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide.
Heathland, no trees.
Off to the right was a dismembered holly grove. No use to anyone.
A couple more miles and I saw a parking area with a few bushy trees and dived into the shade.
We opened the sliding door and tried to sleep. Impossible.
I wandered around keeping out of the sun. A Toyota jeep-thing rolled up and a smartly dressed chap strolled over. He nodded towards the van, "I had one of these for a short while", (What? A VW Scorchio?), "but times were hard and I had to get rid of it".
Can you imagine that? Almost impossible.