Southampton Revisited!

It's been nearly 10 years since we left Southampton, so the first thing we did upon arrival was the obligatory drive by our old flat. It's still there and just as small as I remember! Next stop was the local high street - Portswood. Safeway is now a Waitrose (a step up as supermarkets go) and the dodgy appliance shop looks still to be open (and probably still conning students- long story)!!

We were very grateful to Bob and Lisa and their boys, for welcoming us into their house for the night. Bob and family spent 3 months over summer on sabbatical with Andy's group at ANU. However with already established plans on the Sunday, we went our separate ways.

Our Sunday destination was a walk, picnic and play in the New Forest with Andy's previous Southampton work colleagues - Geoff and Cipo as well as Cipo's partner, Maria Paola and their son, little Riccardo. The New Forest was created by William the Conqueror around 1079 as an area for hunting in particular deer.In 2005, the New Forest was declared a National Parkk. I'd forgotten how special the New Forest is. The trees had begun to emerge from their winter state, were budding brilliant green leaves and contrasted against the carpet of brown leaves and the dark patches of moss created a beautiful scene. First walk was around the Blackwater Arboretum Sensory Trail, a 600m loop encouraging children to use their senses of touch, smell and hearing to explore the trees. Our girls however were more interested in racing from tree to tree trying to climb them....eventually succeeding.

We settled down for a picnic lunch followed by ice cream! The children happily played afterwards in the leaves before we headed off on the Tall Trees Trail, a 1.5 miles walk amongst conifers, some of which were planted in the 1860's when apparently it was vogue to plant exotic trees! There are coast redwood and giant sequoia some of which are around 60m tall. The energy levels of the children began to drop rapidly, so we cut the trail short and decided on a coffee shop stop in Brockenhurst, a local village.

As we made our way to Brockenhurst, we were delighted to see many wild ponies happily grazing. These ponies are synonymous with the words New Forest. They are descendants of the wild ponies which roamed Britain for centuries. Today however all ponies are owned by commoners who have the right to graze their ponies in the New Forest. Pony drifts are held each year, where the ponies are rounded up, given a health check, sold or kept and tail marked (where their tail is trimmed in a particular pattern to be used as identification.) There is around 5000 New Forest ponies currently.  We also were treated to an up close encounter with a Highland cow who was happily waltzing down the middle of the road. Thank goodness we were in the car, their horns are awfully big! It was mid afternoon by the time we finished our coffee and scones. We bid our farewells and drove back to Southampton.

Our final stop was to visit Anne and Ian. Anne and I shared the joys of catching the #5 bus to the Southampton General Hospital. We struck up a conversation one day and became friends! Anne and Ian treated us to a lovely late afternoon tea and we caught up on each others news. By this stage it was getting late and time for us to make the journey back to Oxford.