Verwood Caravan and Camping Club Site - Days 36 - 42 of our Autumn/Winter Tour

Verwood Caravan and Camping Club Site - Days 36 - 42 of our Autumn/Winter Tour 

Monday 18th October 2021 ☁☁☁☂⛆⛆⛆

Yesterday we arrived at Verwood Caravan and Camping Club Site in lovely 🌞sunshine 🌞that lasted the whole day through!  We've been really lucky cos the last rain we saw was 2 weeks ago on the 4th October,  but today has certainly made up for it!  It wasn't really raining when we got up, just a bit of mizzle and drizzle, but the smart old weatherman had predicted downpours by dinner time so we knew that if we were going out it needed to be somewhere close and as quickly as possible.  

Therefore, we left all our dirty pots and set of at 9.30 for Blashford Lakes - a Wildlife Trust nature reserve that was only about 8 miles away!  Once there the very helpful volunteer explained that the site is divided into two halves by a minor road, and she explained  about the best routes to take to access several hides from where we could watch the wildlife. Additionally, she also gave us an information leaflet with a map of the site along with a bit of it's history!

It seems the landscape of the reserve has changed dramatically over the last century - from farmland to a World War II airbase, then to a motor racing circuit and later to sand and gravel pits.  Now, this huge network of pits has been flooded to form numerous lakes within the reserve and also to provide drinking water for the region.  

Anyway, we didn't have to go far from the Visitor's Centre before we reached the first hide (The Ivy North Hide) but we were a bit disappointed with it because non of the windows would open and the outside of them was misted with rain so it was almost impossible to see anything.  Therefore, we soon gave that one up as a bad job and continued on The Woodland Hide and that more than made up for the previous one!

This one, as it's name implies, was set in dense woodland with several bird feeders directly in front of the windows and there was a huge number of takers of multiple varieties accepting the offer of a free snack.  

To name but a few gold and green finches, chaffinches, nuthatches, blue tits, great tits and black birds! Then much to our delight a jay and a greater spotted woodpecker joined the party but scared the little birds away!

A short while later we also spotted an odd little bird that we couldn't name.......

The picture doesn't show it very well (because it was taken through glass) but the bird had strange white patches on the back of it's head and around it's neck!  In the end we thought it was probably a Leucistic (a creature that shows irregular patches of white) or a partially albino Chaffinch! 

To be honest it was quite difficult to tear ourselves away from that hide because the antics of both the birds and ground feeding squirrels was entertaining to watch, but eventually we moved onto the next hide and it was there that we saw the flash of a kingfisher along with a good number of more common water fowl.  

And when we'd finished goggling there, and after a walk around Ellingham Lake, we decided not to push our luck and to head for home!   We couldn't have timed it better really because from the moment we were back in the car the heavens opened and that set the picture for the rest of the afternoon. 

It's amazing what can be done with a chain saw!

Tuesday 19th and Wednesday 20th October 2021 🌧️🌧️⛅⛅⛅🌧️🌧️🌧️

Not much happening in our world at the mo, and I suppose that's partly because of the rain and gusty winds.  Both days started wet but then brightened up for a few hours in the middle, then finished of with more rain that was sometimes torrential.  However, on both days we did get out and managed to miss any major soakings.

On Tuesday we needed to nip back to Poole because when John's phone broke a couple of weeks ago (while it was still under guarantee) we'd taken it to Argos in Poole to request a repair.  Happily he got it back in full working order but with a receipt that said it had had multiple faults, but while we were in Poole we thought we might as well catch up with a few other purchases that we thought we needed!  I completed my collection of 'I Love' seasons jigsaws

'I Love' Autumn

And 'I Love' Winter

We also went to Millet's and brought a new Rucksack which hasn't proved to be one of our best purchases 😒, and then to good old 'Spoonies' for lunch!  After that we had a walk around Poole's lovely park before heading home to listen to the heavy rain rattling on our roof for the rest of the evening and most of the night!

On Wednesday, after waiting for the rain to stop and the strong winds to calm, we headed back to Blashford Lakes to explore the 2nd half of the reserve. We ventured into the Tern, Goosander and Lapwing hides but only spotted common waterfowl that included terns, swans, various ducks, lots of coots and an odd moorhen.  I think the continuing strong winds must have blown everything else away, but all was't lost because we returned to the Woodland Hide where the little birds were, once again, very active, and then our day was 'made' by another sighting of a young stag watching us watching him. 

Thursday 21st October 2021 🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞 But feeling Chilly in the strong breeze 🥶

A lovely day but it had been a horrible night due to Storm Aurore!  The van shook in the wind, the awning flapped and the rain pounded onto our roof, but this morning everything was intact so once again our 4 season awning has stood up to some punishing weather!

So we were just a little bit bleary eyed but as it was such a lovely day we certainly weren't going to waste it!  Therefore, we set Mrs Sat Nav on course for White Moor in the New Forest which should have been about 18 miles, however, she was soon warning us of 'Traffic problems on your route' and we hadn't gone much further when we joined a very long stream of traffic on the A31.  Now, John isn't the most patient with things like that so as soon as a slip road came into view he took the exit, and it was certainly the right thing to do, but now the 14 miles we'd got left to travel turned into 22 and in places it was slow going cos we were on more minor roads.  

But eventually we finally got to our destination, but then the next challenge was finding somewhere to park, and by the time we'd achieved that it was lunch time.  Therefore, we sat overlooking White Moor while we munched watching ponies and cows also munching away, but then all of a sudden we experienced an unexpected animal sighting in the form of 2 fat pigs trotting down the field and even the horses looked surprised! Sadly my hands were full of my lunch and not my camera😭!

We thought this Albino pony  looked a bit like a unicorn from a distance!

Once lunch was finished we went for an unintentional paddle!  When we first started our walk over the Moor we were following a gravel track along with quite a few other people, but seeking solitude and tranquillity we soon turned off along a grassy trail .......which became wetter and wetter and for the next 3 miles we splashed through several inches of ground water with an occasional need to take running jumps over larger puddles and streams!  Amazingly, we managed to get back to the car with dry feet but it was a good job we'd gone in boots and not trainers!

Once back at the car we moved a couple of miles and drove along the very pretty Boulderwood Arboretum Ornamental Drive  to see 'The Queen of the Forest', an oak tree 'The Knightwood Oak' that is over 500 years old, and one that claims to be the biggest in the New Forest!

It's girth was recorded as over 17 feet in 1863, 19 feet in 1906
and over 26 feet now

However, sadly the tree had lost many of it's lower limbs maybe to the storms which struck in 1987 and 1991, and additionally, the area around it looked quite neglected and overgrown. 

Our next stop was at Boulderwood Deer sanctuary where we learnt that it was William the Conqueror who first called the forest 'The New Forest' and claimed it as his royal hunting ground in 1079!  And it was here that we were hopeful of seeing more deer, but for much of our walk we were disappointed.  But just when we'd given up on the idea we spotted these little ladies sunbathing and catching a few 💤s the late afternoon rays.

Friday 22nd October 2021🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞 Much the same as yesterday 🥶

Today our target was Keyhaven and Pennington Marshes Nature Reserve near Milford on Sea, and  although our 23 mile journey there went smoothly, the same couldn't be said of our success trying to park! Our first attempt took us down a very narrow muddy lane where we found no room at the Inn, and many of the road side parking spots were flooded😭!  However, having driven that distance there was no way we were going to give up and our perseverance eventually paid of when our tyres came to rest in an area beside a sports field, but  that required us to toddle about half a mile further to the start of our walk!

The Green bit is mostly the Nature Reserve and the land opposite is the Isle of White

The area we were visiting  used to be the 'Salt Workings of Lymington' and in times gone by the area would have been an industrial landscape of evaporation ponds, pumps, sluice gates and boiling houses that spouted smoke and steam in the process of extracting salt from seawater!  

However, today what we found was a tranquil area of walkways that on one side supported lots of ponds and on the other the waters of The Solent gently lapped against the sea wall.  

Directly opposite and quite close by we could also see the coast of the Isle of White from the Needles at one end and probably up as far as the town of Cowes  in the other direction!

This was our view while we had lunch

The Isle of White Ferries 

And of course, while we were there we were also watching out for birds cos this area is used by many prior to their migration to the sunshine, and also many who fly in (from over 3,000 miles away) from their summer breeding grounds in Scandinavia and the Arctic Circle!

A Red Shank having a paddle

I missed most of them but there were dozens of lapwings resting before their flight

And of course there were plenty of the obligatory egrets, geese and herons fishing about in the shallow waters. 

Once our walk there was complete we moved on to Milford on Sea and had a short walk along the shingle spite that leads to Hurst Castle - it seems the building is undergoing major restoration work at the mo following part of it falling into the sea!

Possibly not at it's best and certainly not the picturesque castle we've ever seen!  

Hurst Spit also had quite an interesting tale to tell.  It seems it's a shifting man-made shingle barrier beach that  protects the western approach to the Solent. We learnt that it shelters large areas of salt marsh and mud flats which provide much needed homes for many rare and some more common creatures, but it hasn't really been in place for long!  The contract to construct it was carried out from August 1996 to January 1997 and involved the transport by barge and placing of 124,000 tons of rock largely from Norway, and also the placing of 300,000 cubic metres of shingle which was dredged from local shingle banks.  And the work isn't really finished because further placing of shingle is planned at intervals in the future to replenish natural loses. 

We sat and had a coffee overlooking the pounding waves of the cold icy waters of the Solent and as we did so a brave elderly gentleman passed us by  wearing only shorts, t-shirt and carrying a towel, and would you believe it, he quickly disrobed and jumped in 🥶 🥶 🥶!  It made my teeth chatter just watching 😂

 

Saturday 23rd October 2021 ☁☁☁☁☁☁☁

Today we were on a bit of a mission and that mission was to get Pies!  And why would that be you may ask??? Well I needed something that would be easy to cook in our caravan and that would feed 12 people who all have big appetites.  Now, to get said pies we made a 50 mile round trip back to Wareham because while we'd been there a week ago  we'd discovered a butcher who made the most fantastic tasty pies, and as this meal was going to be for a special occasion, not just any old pie would do!  And what was that special occasion?  Well, on Monday (25th) our children and grandchildren are joining us here at Verwood CCC for 4 nights during the half term break, but don't worry, there not staying in our caravan - that really would be a bit to snug -🎶'12 in a bed and the little one said.....' 🎶 

NO, they're staying in the sites Ready Erected 'Ready Camp' tents which are situated just behind us😀!  And the occasion is even more special because our eldest son Adam is the big 4 0 and our little granddaughter Evelyn is 6👸 !

So that, and a bit  a lot more stocking up took up the morning, and tiding the van and finding somewhere to store all our goodies took up a good bit of the afternoon🕞! Therefore, when all said tasks were done we just chilled for the rest of the day and then indulged in a bit of 'Strictly' while we ate our tea!


Sunday 24th October 2021  ☁☁⛅⛅🌧️ 🌧️ 🌧️

Sunday morning and what should we do with ourselves?  Unsurprisingly, both the site and the area are quite busy now with holiday makers taking full advantage of half term, and as we know we're going to have a hectic few days in the ones coming up we wanted to just have a quiet walk today.  And for that we ventured to the nearby Rockford Common which is a wide open boundary-less landscape which partly sits on a plateau and has numerous gravel and grass paths that head out in multiple directions.  

However, John has chosen one for us today that initially led us over gorse strewn moor, then down along ancient woodland trails, and on to a perfect coffee spot where we sat on a log beside a pond where the horses came to drink. 

Then after we'd munched our flapjack and drank our coffee we completed our 5 mile circuit by following paths through the Appleslade Enclosure and Redshoot Wood, and once again we just made it back to the car before the threatened rain arrived. 

And that's about all for another week so 👋👋👋 till next time 😘

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