New Forest - Minstead (July 2006)

Had a lovely weekend in the New Forest.

Stayed at the Trusted Servant in Minstead, nice country "inn", beer was London Pride, Ringwood Best Bitter, Wadworths 6X and Timothy Taylors Landlord. We tried the first three and first two were excellent, the 6X was fine. We had the evening meal there as well, really good, the chilli con carne was super. It has a "something" in it which was unusual for chilli, don't know what, but still nice. Treacle tart for pudding, oh the sugar high :-)

Went for a walk through the forest, using a few of the bicycle tracks marked on the latest OS Explorer map. The new Explorer map which is a replacement for OL22 was a pain for being based at Minstead, it's just on the border, so we had to keep flipping the two sided map. Lunched in Lyndhurst, the traffic is plain mad. After lunch tried to locate the source of the Beaulieu river, found a damp patch, maybe that was it ??

We stayed in the "Dr Watson" room at the Trusted Servant, glad we weren't in Moriarty :-)

Full english breakfast, blimey I was stuffed after the meal the night before !

Checked out the Reptile Centre, saw various reptiles, smooth snake, adders, natterjack toad. The fence posts in the car park were well neat.

Then on to Furzy Gardens, to quote their web site http://www.furzey-gardens.org/, "A haven of peace and tranquility in the New Forest", and it is !! Really nice gardens, ambled around them, so nice just the noise of the wind rustling the trees

And then back home