Horses and Ferris Wheels

The last two destinations on our little trip round the South UK were Brockenhurst, a small town in a National Park called New Forest, and Brighton the beach city below London.

We got to Brockenhurst from Exeter and we'd been told that the New Forest area was full of wild horses and ponies and we were like, yeah yeah heard that one before. Probably just one or two old scabby horses somewhere deep in the National Park way away from any towns. But oh were we wrong, a few hundred meters from the train station and we saw a few horses just wandering round the streets... the town streets. We thought 'well that must be it - right?!' but..... noooooooo no no.

A few blocks more and past the cattle stops which keep the animals out of the main town shops and there were heaps of horses and their ponies, donkies and a few cows, just milling outside peoples houses????

So, heaps of animals around, a nice forest to explore and Rach signing us up for a 5hr Mountain Bike / Run at the end of the month. Probably time for a bit of training. So off to the Bike Hire store to pick up a few bikes and a map of the area and hit the trails. It was supposed to be a 21 mile loop ride in the forest dipping through a few of the little villages as we went. It's just the map we were given wasn't incredibly detailed and the directions were all like 'go up the hill over the dale and carry on till you get to a gate'. Except there were many a hill, not a dale to be seen and gates a plenty. We figured it out eventually (except for the end, a mile from home I went the wrong way and added 6 miles onto the journey, sorry Rach) and got to see some nice rolling country side and English forest.

We finished our time off in Brockenhurst by taking our books, some 'local' food (chips n curry sauce) and going to sit in a meadow watching over the wild horses and the sunset. Bonus that we sat right by a blackberry bush so desert was right on hand. Brockenhurst and New Forest, big thumbs up.

Next and final leg of the journey was two days in Brighton. Not really sure what we were expecting going to Brighton, we new there was a beach and a permanent carnival on a pier but not much else. Turns out to be a pretty big place, kinda like the Gold Coast of the UK but Englishified. So sand is replaced by pebbles and sun is replaced by less intense sun.

We were staying about 30 min from the Brighton centre so we had a walk along the boardwalk each day to get to the city. And a pretty cool city it is, just back from the beach it's pretty easy to get around walking. Lots of cool shops everywhere, I had to rein Rachel in and remind her that......... I'm just kidding; no one can rein in Rach. So lots of cool shops that I had the pleasure of accompanying Rach into. Kind of a hippy, artistic vibe hanging around the place, probably because of the beachy nature to the place but it makes for a really laid back atmosphere even so close to London.

We spent quite a bit of time at the Brighton Pier and got a bit addicted to the dolphin racing game, throw ball at targets to make your dolphin go faster, there was a race caller and everything. Also did our standard fairground bumper cars, where Rachel hammered me repeatedly as my car was too slow (blaming the tools).

The Brighton food fair was also on while we were there so we got to taste some proper Sussex fare and Geoff (friend from Auckland) and his girlfriend Jamie (who's from the area) met up with us for dinner one night as well.

On our last night before home it just happened to be Rachel’s birthday so we finished our time by going out to one of the multitude of veggie restaurants (hippie influence on the city) and taking in the sunset on the pebble beach.

Brighton, Brockenhurst, Exeter, Bath and Cardiff. The South UK........done