THE BIG WALK

For my second trip to England, my hosts and friends Brett and Janine invited me for a weekend in the NEW FOREST. William the Conqueror named the forest as his new hunting grounds. In the late 1600's the forest had been heavily logged to support the British Navy's massive shipbuilding program.

So we traveled Saturday morning about 2 hours to get there, rain all the way. Checked into a small B&B in Ringwood, a town on the edge of the forest. The b&b was only 17 pounds per person. Nearby Hotels were 60-120 pounds per room per night. Not like the US where B&Bs are cute, trendy and expensive.

The rain continued, so we went for a drive instead of our planned hike. We drove nearly every "A" and "B" grade road in the forest and many smaller roads. Often we would have to back the car out of a roadway because a way was flooded. Anyway, we drove probably 100 miles through all of the communities marked on our map.

The wind and rain continued throughout the day and the waves along the coast were quite violent as you can see from this photo taken at  'Milford by the Sea' . We could not see the Isle of Wight just a few miles from the coast. Brett and Janine are seen here fighting the fierce winds, at least thats what they want us to think.

Sunday morning , it looked clear and sunny, still cold, but sunny. During breakfast it started to rain, but thankfully stopped by checkout time (10 am). We drove to a starting point for our 5-1/2 mile walk and it was beautiful day. Well, much like Giligan our 3 hour tour become an all day adventure. We must have take a wrong turn because we found ourselves facing the prospect of traveling down a lane of mud.

Resourceful sort that I am, I felt we could walk along the side of the track (trail to us). As I stepped onto the shoulder I sank about 12 inches into the bog. The only way I could stop from sinking deeper or falling on my face was to take a quick step forward with my other foot, and again and again. Before I could find a log to hold my weight I had traveled about 30 feet from dry track. It took a few minutes to realize that the only way back was to repeat the process in the other direction. I think we have a picture, but at this moment my Levies are still soaking to try and clear the clay that hardened on them. My boots (I bought them here and I am sure glad I wasn't wearing my slip-on deck shoes) are crusted with about a "3/4 thick layer of hard clay. This after trying to rinse them in a stream (brook) and letting them dry on my feet for
6 hours.
 

Back to the walk . . .

We retraced our steps to dry ground and felt that if we followed the ladies with their children on bikes with training wheels we could probably find our way out. Wrong! They had started from a different parking area! At least there was a neighborhood pub. Quite crowded on a sunny Sunday with many families sitting in the yard to pass the time of day. A few inquiries turned some folks wwho gave us conflicting stories as to our best route back. We were about 5 miles from our starting point (remember, this was a 5-1/2 mile loop we were supposed to be on.) Well, we needed a pint to carry on, along with some crisps (potato chips) for energy and nourishment (they don't have any WOW chips or any other olestra type product here).

On the return, our spirits were good, and our bladders full. The first time we stopped to empty, we disagreed about the prper course back. In the spirit of the day, we took the wrong fork. About 45 minutes later, another fork and it seems we took the correct turn, for about 20 minutes before losing confidence and turning back. Forty minutes later we encountered a ranger to be told we were again on the wrong track, so we retraced our steps to where we had been nearly an hour earlier, only it took 40 more minutes to get there. It was the just 45 minutes to get to the trail about a mile or so from our "relief" stop. We encountered "red sand" a landmark on our instruction sheet and returned without further incident to Brett's car. Our 2 hour walk had become a 5 hour misadventure. It was a great day, the sun was shining and we had no rain. Already my feet are feeling the pain, tomorrow, I'm sure my body will catch up.

Posted October 26, 1998

P.S.
By the time you read this, I will be packing for my trip home, so see you all soon.
Carlos