New Forest Mini-break - Day #2 - Burley and Cider

So back to day two of the mini break (Thursday last week), amazingly the thermal shields kept out the *blazing* sun completely, allowing us to sleep in until 10am (which would *never* happen in a tent)...only real mishap being some of the cushions falling off the end of the bed during the night...need to find some ingenious solution to that, as it's a bit annoying the bed getting shorter and shorter during the night...anyway, it was warm, and quiet and dark right until we wanted it to be otherwise, so a great success...

The weather was staggeringly gorgeous again (what luck!), breakfast was rustled up (bacon sarnie and tea for me, coffee and a toasted cheese scone for Flyingpops) then we zipped up the awning, opened all the curtains, fired up the engine and headed into the New Forest in search of some nice scenery and local wildlife, which we found in abundance -

- we parked Colin up by the side of the (almost deserted) main road -

- and then hiked off towards what appeared (in the distance) to be a promising body of water -

- which even turned out to have a name "Whitten Pond" (accompanied by stark discouragement, should one be contemplating a cooling dip) -

- and there, beyond the wall of gorse flowers, we found some wildlife -

- a small field of New Forest ponies, stopped to drink (and scratch their itchy behinds on the gorse) -

- we stayed and watched them for a while, but they didn't seem inclined to do very much apart from munch continually at the thin grass by the side of the pond, so we walked back to the bus and continued our journey to down the road towards the lovely little village of Burley, this time being slightly outside the tourist season, it didn't seem quite as bad as our last visit, still quite busy though -

- the queue for ice creams was still as long as ever (and this lot wasn't even the hand-made variety) -

- we wandered around the town (which most oddly seems to consist of mostly witchcraft related gift shops, for no other reason than that a white witch lived there for a bit in the 1950s - the locals objected to her presence and she felt compelled to move out - but they seem to be making quite a good living in her wake, ironically ;) -

- then up the road towards the busy little scrumpy cider farm (woo hoo!), found out they do borough market once a week too(!) -

- where I scored a small bottle of "medium" (very nice indeed) -

- then we headed back to the camp site, Flyingpops feeling a bit poorly with a cold, so she had a little sleep in the back of the camper while I played on my PSP, made a start on the *excellent* "Vulcan 607" (about the bombing runs on the Falklands during the little spat we had with Argentina), then back to the gastropub for my lovely steak (as already mentioned) -

- came back full and happy, made a hot water bottle -

- and then drifted off to sleep watching Pirates of the Caribbean on the Shinco -

- a lovely day... ;)