Avoiding a funk of epic proportions
Needing a day out!
Some people have a spring cleaning flurry; we have an autumn project flurry. Not quite cleaning, more like nesting: fixing up the space to be ready for the extra time spent indoors. Now that the weather is cooler, we want our inside space to be cozy and relaxing in the months ahead. So we change things around.
As a result, we are fully engrossed in our autumn house renovations: we have been in discussion with an architect and have visited numerous product and design showrooms for ideas. Surveyors, bathroom fitters and carpet installers are scheduled or have been round for measurements and installation. Another bedroom has been painted. This is in addition to the usual weekend and sometimes weekday trips with Pete’s mum for her various appointments, garden maintenance, and meals we prepare, deliver and eat with her. I’ve mentioned all this before, and for those of you who may still have parents nearby needing care, you know of this additional set of daily and weekly tasks.
We don’t begrudge any of this extra work, but it does tend to suck up all our available extra time, and we tend to get completely house-bound if we don’t consciously and deliberately choose to do something different. We like working on our house, we enjoy gardening, I love to cook. Nothing bad about any of it. But recently I reached the point where if I didn’t get off the Island or away from our usual weekend routine of chores I thought I would explode. Or at least go into a funk of epic proportions.
When I saw a weekend of otherwise uncommitted time a few weeks into the future, I put a ring around it in our calendar and we held it sacred. At the beginning of the week when we could more safely predict the weather, we picked the ONE day with no rain predicted, and booked a ferry to the ‘big island’. Oh joy!
Those of you who have been with me for awhile might remember my descriptions of the New Forest in Southern England. If you haven’t read it yet, this previous post is a good description of the area and what we love about it.
Birthday Blessings
My partner’s birthday is in mid-January. I have a couple of friends with very early January birthdays, so I am used to drawing out the holiday season into the new year in a slightly fuzzy and pleasant way. Not with full-blown party-parties, but gentle gatherings and the chance to keep eating the fun foods,…
As the New Forest is close, we decided to spend the day there finding new corners to poke around, and because it was Sunday, obviously we had to include a Sunday pub lunch. As you do! The inn with an attached pub we had stayed before has really delicious food, and we were tempted to just go there as a reliable choice. But we were also trying to be good about going new places to stretch our knowledge and experiences, so we sleuthed around until we had a list of pubs that took reservations. After trying a couple that were full or only had very late sittings (3:30 is just too late for us!), we found one with good reviews in what looked to be a very small village in the middle of the New Forest. Yay!
Working around our early afternoon lunch, we picked out a couple of walks for the day. We picked a shorter first walk along a previously unvisited heath area with numerous trails. I picked a heath because I wanted to be in any and all available sunshine!
As we were driving a rather circuitous route to get there we realised it looked quite familiar, and by the time we parked we knew we had walked on the outer edges of this area last January. So much for discovering new territory. But we were able to take off into another end of the heath and not repeat any of last years walk at all, and enjoy an hour of lovely bright sunshine among the gorse, grasses, bramble and mushrooms on the open heath.
The landscape looked completely different on a warm autumn day compared to its winter January version. The free-range ponies increasingly came out to the big open heath like all of us walkers. There were one or two when we started our walk, and by the time we had circumnavigated the open area, there were two groups of 6 or more ponies in each. People were also drawn to see the ponies, who look to be in a much healthier condition that the wild ponies we used to see on Dartmoor.
We were then off to find our Pub for our well-deserved lunch. Surprisingly, although we had quite an entertaining lunch at the pub in a VERY SMALL village, (the only ‘commerce’ was a one room Post office/store, and a garage, along with this pub), we decided that the quality of the food we have at our regular Sunday lunch spot on the Island was definitely better. And that is always good to confirm, don’t you think?
Being now well-fortified (and possibly a tiny bit overstuffed), we set off on a walk described in one of the brochures of New Forest ‘strolls’ we had picked up last January. Unlike the other walks we had been on where we saw a few people off and on, we saw almost no one on this walk, probably less than six the entire two and a half hours, and at least three of those were in front of their farms or houses.
We walked on boggy trails and well-maintained gravel roads. We wandered through the graveyard of St. John the Baptist Church, which was built by William I in 1079 when he created the New Forest. The brochure says that its use as a place of worship may be considerably older (!)1
We said hello to someone who looked very much like Jim Broadbent wandering through the outskirts of a rather lovely village. It probably wasn’t him, but since every once in a awhile we do see well-known people, it is not a wholly unreasonable assumption to make. We saw and said hello back to Samuel L Jackson last time we were in California (he said ‘how’s it going’ first!), and we saw Rory Kinnear in a London wine bar last spring. So, not impossible.
One of the things we love about the New Forest is that the landscape is semi-wild; some of it is in nature preserves but much of it is common land. It is a working landscape that feels well looked after. I like that many of the houses are tucked away and that there are miles and miles of walking paths and trails. I like that you can see ponies, and that you can find tea houses and pubs dotted around. I like the mix of open heath and and forests, and that the forests don’t feel claustrophobic. At this time of year, the giant ferns were a glorious dried brown forming a soft understory to the gorse and tall conifers. The holly was in full berry bloom.
When I first asked Pete to describe the New Forest to me, he said it was like a gentle and well-dressed version of Dartmoor, the wild moors just outside our previous home in Plymouth. Dartmoor feels like a slightly scary landscape; it can be very wild and vast, and bad things can happen to you if you get caught out unprepared in bad weather. And it is true, people do die there almost every year. But in the New Forest, the wild seems a little bit more managed, there are smaller distances between roads, and if you got lost you need only walk just a little farther, and you will come across a country manor estate with a nice Range Rover in the driveway and well-dressed people who would get help or at the very least provide a quality cup of tea. It is very civilised, but not twee.
For this American who grew up with wild west landscapes and more rustic services, if any were available at all, I find this combination of pint-sized wild landscapes alongside civilised afternoon tea and/or pub roast lunches provides perfect day trips out and generally a very pleasant way to live. It is a non-stressful way to spend time outside, and one ends up feeling quite relaxed and carefree by the end of the day. Oh, and obviously, just before we reached the car, we had a quick rain shower, followed by a rainbow. Because it would be inconsiderate not to end the day perfectly.
Thank you as always for reading this post! I so much appreciate your attention in this very busy attention-grabbing world.
I’d love to hear about your favourite places to go or things to do:
do you like a Sunday pub lunch or afternoon tea?
do you prefer wild or tamed places to walk or hike? or Both!
do you have other relaxing rituals that provide de-stress time?
Until next time,
xx Sabrina
Much of the information in this post comes from the New Forest National Park Authority, “10 Scenic Strolls in the New Forest National Park” guide maps series, and the “New Forest Essential Guide, 2022.”
Nothing like a Fall tramp! Something about the smell of leaf mold and crisp air. I miss that here is SoCal but love the 72-75f temps year round. Look forward to sharing that with you in February!
I remember tromping in the snow bundled up as if it were winter in the Sierras in Dartmoor with you and Pete. Of course that was one of the infamous bad weather January visits. Your new plan sounds quite civilized. Funny how the change in light and less light in the day make one look for snugness and coziness at this time of year. In the summer, I want to be outside playing but when winter rolls around, I appreciate the chance to stay inside more often (though we still go on urban walks everyday). You've inspired me to find a special place for lunch or an evening beverage before heading back to the warmth of home.