Monday 16th March 2026

So with my almost ever present partner resting her knee after a fall, I chose to cover a large part of our remaining miles in the New Forest, twelve miles to be precise.

From Fawley, with it’s now disused power station around to Beaulieu with the rather famous car museum, sadly no time to visit! 

A dry day weather wise but a part of the coast where the official King Charles III England Coastal Path is pretty much non existent, which means creating a route from footpaths running as close as possible to the sea. The lack of coastal path is generally because the land owners refuse permission for us ‘commoners’ to access the land, locally here it’s mostly the New Forest.

So today’s route included a few forest trails along with probably half being along forest roads which gives great views of splendid houses and of course forest ponies, along with as you enter Beaulieu even donkeys on the roadside.  The recurring thought of today though concerns the lack of any sort of footpaths in an area where there must surely be a huge demand for walking but what do I know?  

Anyways with the end approaching of our New Forest / Southampton walking, we have some 25 miles left over the next couple of days including a ten miler with my old mate Brett from football,(he’s not actually as old as me, although watching Wycombe Wanderers for nearly forty years has not helped!).  We also have the luxury of (Mrs Brett) Mel dropping us at the start of the aforementioned ten miles and collecting us from the end of the walk .. oh what joy indeed!!