Lyndhurst Parish circular

Sun, 2013 Nov 10 2:02 PM GMT

With Harry. Some very muddy, squelchy sections. Beautiful day. Just over 8 miles in all. 500 ft of climbing.

A fine sunny day, blue skies and a cool wind encourage us to make an afternoon of this walk, taken from a leaflet.

We start from the Custards,  going through the gate on the field side of Race Course View - quite wet and soggy, as most places are just now. We squelch over to a bridge and turn right to follow a bank of earth alongside the golf course, and through some fine trees.

This takes us to the access road and the main Southampton road - there is an underpass. On the far side of the road we walk uphill and over the top to the Beaulieu road. As we are out of the trees the going is firmer.

There is still plenty of lying water.  We cross the Beualieu Road taking a path between Oak Acre and The Ravens.  The path meets a gate after about a kilometre - we go straight on, and then up the hill behind the Crown and Stirrup.  At the top of the hill we cross the A337, and take a track about 30 metres to the left, following a driveway across a cattle grid.  Just before the gate to High Coxlease we turn left and follow the fence downhill and then to our right for almost 2 kilometres.  We turn left on to a path across a large clearing, then along a track into the woods. In about 200 metres we turn right and walk up a wide track to the gate and the road.
 At the road we turn left, through the village of Bank, with the Oak Inn, where we turn left again and follow the road around Gritnam, circling this hamlet, with houses on our right. At Woodbine Cottage our path leads left through the trees to the road (A35).  Just before the road the path goes left and into an underpass.

After the underpass our path turns right, and goes through the trees to Allum Green. We join the track at Corner Cottage, and turn left.  At Caister Cottage we follow the fence and wall for a good 100 metres,  then take a right fork and head up the hill. We should have turned left and into Emery Down. Instead we continued and emerged close to Swan Green, but turned left towards Emery Down, and then right along Silver Street, and then along a path for a good 600 metres to the road to Pikes Hill. 

The road is very narrow and there are  too many cars, but very soon we reach the Fenwick hospital, where we turn left along a path beside the hospital.  This takes us into a small road of big houses.  There is a turn to the right, leading into a cul de sac, and we take the footpath in the left hand corner, which leads to the Waterloo Arms. From here it is a short walk, across the main Romsey Road and back along Race Course View.

These boots are made for walking

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