On Monday as the weather looked to be nice, we wandered over to Debbie’s Mum and Dad’s for a brief visit, as I hadn’t seen them since I was last in the UK, and then took a trip out to our favourite spot in The New Forest to take a walk.   Our plan was to re-trace the walk that we did back in April, when we saw several white deer, but it involved trecking way off the main paths and heading off into parts of the forest that only rangers usually go into.  However, we really enjoyed our walk last time, and wanted to try and find the same places again.

Our walk started from a car park on the Ornamental Drive, which leads up to Rhinefield House, a 5 star hotel that used to be owned by Richard Branson (and maybe still is).  The Ornamental Drive is lined with Rhododendron bushes on both sides, and for a short time in the spring it’s lovely, however this is early August and not a flower in sight.

We headed out and had no problem re-tracing our previous journey, except that three months more into the summertime the ferns had fully grown, so it was not always so easy to determine where we went before, however we managed ok.

At one point where we came close to a fence line, we stood deciding which way we needed to go through an area where the grass was longer.   Suddenly, out of a grassy mound not 20 feet from where we were standing, a pheasant flew up into the air, giving us both a start.   We looked at each other, and started to talk about it, when all of a sudden there was a second, then a third, and a fourth, all not 20 feet from where we were, but we hadn’t seen them at all in the grass as they were so well camouflaged.

From here the grass got a bit longer, and it was hard to always find a way to go where we could avoid it.  Since Debbie is mortally afraid of snakes, and the forest is known to have a lot of adders, the most poisonous snake in the UK, she was rather concerned.  However we didn’t see a single one, nothing scary, and found our way quite easily up several little used paths, across a fence, over an old wooden bridge, and we came to a clearing where the previous time we had seen several horses and all of our deer.

Approaching the clearing through some trees we saw a few deer, but they saw us first, and headed away before we could take any decent photographs.   So we carried on to the clearing, seeing no wildlife, and decided to wander into the woods at the far end of the clearing, where we sat on a fallen tree to wait for some deer to hopefully arrive.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tPAJWVGr5o

Well, we waited and waited, waited some more, trying not to move too much, trying to keep quiet, and eventually after what mist have been close to 30 minutes, our patience was rewarded by about a dozen deer coming close, led by one of the white deer.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BE3Y5ouDQA

They didn’t come as close as we would have liked, so eventually we made a move and started walking towards them, which caused them to move away, however we did get close enough for me to take some video, while surprisingly because of the amount of zoom that was needed, Debbie also got some nice photographs.   We tried to follow the deer for about 1/4 mile, but it was obvious that they wouldn’t be coming closer, so we decided to head on to the next leg of our journey.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fShNgDYG9Gs

We hadn’t gone very far when a family of ponies came along, and as we approached, one of the two foals walked right up to me, within a few feet, before turning around and going back to feeding.   The whole experience was so nice, because there were no sounds of other people around, in fact no sounds of human life at all, which was really nice.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wj3YrwHPn7M

The last leg of the journey took us a different way back, since we had to cross a stream using a fallen log, and then had to find our way back to the car park, which was about a mile away,  through an area of woodland that had huge clumps of ferns, boggy patches, and the only pathways were those that had been made by animals not people.  But we succeeded, and ended up back close to the ornamental drive, the car park and then home.

Below you will find some of the photos that Debbie took, and I hope you also enjoyed my video clips.   Clicking on any of the photos in the gallery will display the full size image.