The plan for Karen’s birthday was to have a couple of nights in a shepherd’s hut in the New Forest and have a good long walk with a pub lunch in the middle. That’s exactly what we did. Unfortunately Storm Barbara wasn’t part of the plan, which meant that the first six miles of the walk were done in grey conditions and a fairly heavy rain. The remaining twelve miles were in absolutely torrential rain, with the tracks running like rivers. When, late on, we came to a wide and fairly deep stream, without the advertised footbridge it wasn’t really a hardship to wade across: it didn’t make us wetter, but it did clean some of the mud off.
Needless to say, the wildlife and photographic opportunities were somewhat limited.
