The Morning Commute

I'm a town person at heart, townie born and bred. I find the countryside a strange place, the whole dampness, the smells, the weird people - give me concrete that holds firm beneath my feet rather than squelchy mud in the winter or tinder dry flora in the summer.

However there are occasions when it's good to relax, I'm lucky that I can drive along the edge of the New Forest to and from work rather than endure a fellow passengers sweaty armpits or halitosis on public transport travelling into a larger town.

Anyway yesterday I had a forty mile round trip from one side of the Forest to the other to see a client and it was a beautiful journey, crisp morning, blue cloudless sky and hardly anybody on the road. Driving along B roads with The Shins on the mp3, sunglasses on put in one of those 'I could drive all day' moods. The roads were relatively quiet, given that B roads in the nation's newest national park can sometimes resemble other towns A roads, and the livestock kept off the roads rather than randomly wandering across them. I know the Forest belongs to the animals, but driving along at just under 40 (the speed limit within the forest) only to be suddenly confronted by a pony, cow or deer is not something I look forward to.

The journey back was quite different weatherwise, dark clouds brewing up in the west, rain splattering onto the road turning it into a sheet of greaseproof paper and various hooved animals wandering aimlessly across my path. I saw a caravan at the side of the road that had been reduced to its constituent parts: chipboard, hardboard, wheels, chassis - as if left for somebody to come along and put it all together as part of an evening class , either that or it was another Top Gear experiment gone wrong. Top Gear come to our area at least once a series you see and it wasn't entirely beyond the realms of possibility.

The Verderers who 'control' the Forest remind me of the Spanish in the way they only allow access to the parts they don't mind getting spoiled on a small scale. If you want to enjoy the Forest to its best you have to leave the car and walk off into the woods, in the same way that you need to walk in the Picos rather than take a bus.

As I said I'm a townie, but the New Forest on a quiet spring day does take some beating.