Last year we went camping in Wales. It was lovely, Wales was beautiful and The Green Man Festival was fabulous (again) however there were dark clouds, alas not metaphorical clouds but real clouds with real rain. We had a good time but when we looked at this years camping trips in our van we decided that we needed to remember what camping is like when the sun shines. Cue the New Forrest. Now I am sure that it does rain sometimes in the New Forrest but we have never been there when it has, and when you are camping that is what counts.
So with a scorching bank Holiday beckoning we loaded up the Van and headed south. We had stayed at Denny Wood five years ago and loved the way you can camp under the trees. This is a site where you don’t have to book months ahead and even if it is full. There are other sites all run by Forrest Holidays. We have our own loo so we have a greater choice of sites including Denny’s. We arrived on Thursday evening, set up and had supper. By the time we had washed up it was almost dark and wonderfully peaceful. Because the site has no loo; the site is populated almost exclusively by Motor homes and caravans, the owners of which tend to retreat inside them when it gets dark leaving the forest to us. I don’t think we have stayed on a quieter site anywhere!
The next day we woke up and had breakfast watching the dear and listening to a cuckoo. Went a couple miles into Lyndhurst, hired a couple of bikes and came back and read and lazed around in the sunshine. The kids found other kids to play with and I looked blissfully out into the forest. Looking up through the iridescent green oak canopy to the powder blue sky above I remembered why I love camping.