Wiltshire Holiday June 2012 - page 3
From our Downton holiday cottage we ventured into the
nearby New Forest in Hampshire during our week in south Wiltshire and
enjoyed looking around the scary wizard and witchcraft shops in Burley
before heading out for a short walk along the Castleman's Corkscrew
trail, part of a disused railway that runs through the New Forest here
to the south of Burley.
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Our self-catering holiday cottage was on the outskirts of Downton in
south Wiltshire and conveniently close to Hampshire and the New
Forest. Here we are, as you do, sampling the wine in the cottage
one evening as we cooked dinner but...
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...we also ate out at the local Indian restaurant in the next village,
and this pub in Downton; here's Belinda choosing her meal from the
extensive blackboard menu. The Wooden Spoon was excellent so we
happily posted a positive review on BITE.
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Right, so off to the New Forest then and Burley, a village we've
visited before to collect some delicious cider - and we did the same
again this time!
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Burley promotes itself as a traditional village 'untouched by time'...
hmmm, maybe, but it still has its fair share of gift and tourist shops.
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Burley's known for it's connections with witches, dragons and smuggling
so we explored a few witch shops. The story goes that a 'white'
witch called Sybil Leek walked the village in the late '50s wearing...
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...a long black coat and pet jackdaw on her shoulder. But this
upset the locals who saw her as a bad 'black' witch, so she moved to
the US and wrote books on the occult and astrology. Anyway, the
many...
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...witch shops of Burley were interesting to look around following
witch, opps, which...
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...we put our best feet forward and headed south from Burley into the
New Forest countryside.
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So out came the smartphone
again - doing away with paper maps we used GPS and our favourite navigation app to find our way
to pick up the Castleman's Corkscrew trail.
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Now here's a nice spot for a New Forest picnic. That's Turf Hill
in the distance, although we didn't find out if it lived up to the name
we gave it - Tuff Hill - as our route took a right just before
it. Phew!
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Ponies wander freely in the New Forest, in an old tradition called
Commoning.
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Presently we reached the Castleman's Corkscrew trail which is a leisure
trail following...
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...the route of the disused Southampton to Dorchester railway.
After Belinda had a stand-off with this adorable New Forest pony we...
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...found (well, Belinda found) a geocache
at this old bridge that once took the railway over a stream running
through the New Forest heathland.
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Here's a scenic New Forest view along that stream.
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Safely back at Burley among the witches, we finished our visit to the
New Forest as we started the holiday in Wiltshire a week earlier - in
the pub!
We've many UK
tourism resources collected over the years of our travels, you may
just find them useful for your own holiday or visit planning.
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Wiltshire 1 | Wiltshire 2 | Wiltshire
3 (New Forest)
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