England - the land of horses, forests and manners.

We took a couple of days off between travels with friends and visited the New Forest. This isn't technically all forest - the old word 'forest' means hunting ground. It was originally a hunting ground for King William 1. Today it's a park of sorts, where horses, donkeys and cows are free to roam everywhere - on the roads, in people's gardens and in the woods. Nearly every house in the towns has a cattle grid or a closed gate over the driveways to keep the animals out.

Most of the ponies are fairly tame and some are really friendly. Of course, they're mostly New Forest ponies. They release stallions with pure New Forest blood and I think they sell off the foals each year. There were some beautiful looking animals.

This foal was so cute!

There were many houses with newly thatched roofs. Check out how intricate the thatch work is!

I love the way each house in a town has a name - Five Oaks, Acorn Cottage, Japonica Cottage etc. They're usually called cottages, even though they are large houses.

We went for a couple of walks in the forest. It was lovely.

Getting friendly with the locals....

England is so horsey - it almost seems unsurprising to see a horse and cart on the road!

One thing we've noticed about England is how polite everyone is. People always say hello when we pass on walking tracks and everyone is really friendly. They can take politeness to extremes though. Check out these two signs we saw in our travels.

When we travel, we usually do our laundry in bathroom basins and hang it up in the bathroom to dry overnight. Our bathrooms often look like a second-hand clothes shop but it gets the job done!

Suddenly, with England's terrible weather, we had trouble drying our clothes. I had to resort to using the hair dryer!

 At last it was time to meet up with David and Fran, our friends from New York. David and John did business together for many years and they are the reason we decided to come to England. They were attending a wedding and wanted to do some walking on the South Downs Way and this is where we joined them.

We warmed up on our first afternoon with a short walk to the nearby town of Steyning. I love the town sign. The town sign had us baffled but I'm sure there's a good reason for it!

We also found a couple of towns in the next few days with this street name!

Finally it was time to head out on the first day of our two-day walk.

The tracks led us largely through farmland. The rolling hills provided beautiful views. (Thanks to David for some of these photos!)

We walked past all sorts of farms and saw just about every type of farmed animal there is. The free-range pig farm we passed was quite fascinating.

The piglets wandered everywhere and were really funny. These ones would approach John then turn around and run away. I'm quite sure I heard them go "wee, wee, wee all the way home!"

The wildflowers were lovely. It was great to see poppies again!

As we walked the clouds got darker and darker....

About half an hour before our planned lunch stop, the heavens opened. We had coats but we got completely drenched. We made it to the pub looking forward to the open fire they had advertised but it wasn't lit. We ate a warm meal but had no intention of keeping on walking in the pouring rain so we grabbed a taxi and went to our B & B that was booked for that night. 

We were met by the rudest owner we've ever come across. She made it quite clear that we were too early - we weren't supposed to arrive until 4pm. The rooms weren't ready and we were obviously hugely inconveniencing her. She finally said she would get the rooms ready "in due course" and allowed us to sit in our wet clothes until they were ready! As you can imagine, the showers were fantastic when we finally got them!

Fran had a bruised toe so she decided to give the next day's walking a miss. She received a similar treatment from our landlady when she asked if she could stay a bit later so she headed out exploring while David, John and I walked the track. The weather was a lot better!

We found many blackberries along the track and they were pretty good. I don't know how they manage to keep the blackberries under control here - they only line the paths and don't seem to invade the paddocks like they do at home. I wish I knew what their secret was!

Finally, after a 13 mile day, we finished our walk. Our accommodation that night was fantastic! It was at a winery and the rooms looked out over the vineyards.

I hadn't realised that the winery made sparkling wine - awesome! We had a wonderful tour of the vineyard and sampled the goods. What a wonderful way to finish the day.

We had yet another fabulous meal in the local pub then the next day we said goodbye to David and Fran. We had had such a great time with them!

We had the afternoon to fill in while we waited for our plane so we got a lot of computer work done then went for a walk up a nearby hill. We climbed over stiles and walked along tracks where beautiful trees arched overhead. It was a great way to end the trip.

Overall, England was fantastic - but I have to be honest and say the weather was horrible. If this is summer then what is the rest of the year like? It's a truly stunning place to visit but we wouldn't want to live here!

Toodlepip!

Heather and John