The stuff that memories are made of (From Swindon Advertiser)

The stuff that memories are made of

5:33pm Friday 9th December 2011 in Holiday Reviews

Gary Lawrence travels back to a childhood favourite – the New Forest – and finds it as idyllic as he remembers

I HAVE a hazy, sun-drenched memory of a childhood holiday in the New Forest. It stands out from a legion of distant rain-sodden exiles in deepest Wales and frostbitten sojourns in Scotland by dint of pleasant recollections of green fields and golden sand.

The thing is, I’ve never been back, not even come close in 30 years, so a weekend break at Milford on Sea, near Lymington, was a chance to see just how rose-tinted those reminiscences were.

It is less than two hours from Swindon by road and even quicker by train. Travelling across the New Forest National Park requires concentration as the area’s famous ponies wander all over the place, strolling into the road without so much as a glance at the oncoming traffic.

We stayed at Harvest House, a beautiful former vicarage in Milford built by local architect William Ravenscroft.

It has been branded by some tourist board marketing guru as one of the new ‘faux-tels’, that is. an upmarket B&B that does a whole lot more than cram its guests into a damp room the size of a Top Shop changing cubicle and eject them at 10am the next morning after an encounter with greasy bacon and eggs.

Faux-tels are, apparently, an emerging trend in short breaks, offering the kind top notch accommodation usually to be found in decent hotels but with the personal service and attention only a host with just a few guests to cater for has time to provide.

The house has just three immaculately furnished guest rooms and we stayed in the Attic Room, perched in the eaves amid tastefully rustic furniture, and were able to gaze across the green hills surrounding Milford from the window.

Harvest House owners Amanda and John know the area like the back of their hand and are only too willing to plan your stay for you, right down to the last detail if you’d let them.

If you are looking for a gentle walk, a pleasant drive or a decent meal they know exactly the place.

The house itself sits in an acre or so of manicured lawn, festooned with luxurious nooks and crannies in which to forget your working week.

It is also just a few minutes’ walk from the sea: “eight minutes to be exact,” said John, a retired aeronautical engineer who now restores classic Porsches when he isn’t pointing townies like me towards pubs.

He was wrong actually, because it took us nine minutes to arrive on the sparkling seafront with its long shingle beach and stunning views of the Isle of Wight and The Needles (but I did stop to gaze greedily at the menu of the chip shop on the village green).

You can walk for miles along the sea front (although an excellent tuna sandwich and a cup of tea at the Needles Eye Cafe is recommended before you start) towards Keyhaven, and along the way is the newly-refurbished Marine Cafe Bar where you can enjoy a nice cold beer while watching other, more determined, walkers chalking off their umpteenth mile of the day.

The Marine was a memorable stop-off for two reasons. Firstly, the American barman does an entertaining impression of an English accent and secondly, I saw Radio 5 Live film critic Mark Kermode, whose work I admire, enjoying a drink with his family I was about to tell him how much I enjoy his work when I realised he was having a terse and increasingly loud disagreement with his daughter, not really the moment to express my liking for his film reviews.

The coast stretches along from The Marine towards Keyhaven, a quaint little inlet that is home to dozens of yachts and once was a thriving fishing village.

To the south is a nature reserve that stretches over miles of marshland.

There is also a ferry service that will take you over to Hurst Castle, a fort built by Henry VIII to fight off the Spanish, extended to repel the French in the 17th century and fortified in 1939 to keep out the Germans.

The invaders would have struggled to get past the castle’s impregnable walls but they could have bought the place to a standstill, as we did, by not having change of a £10 note. Having emptied our pockets of every last coin to get in, the pleasant little cafe ground to a halt when we proffered said note in exchange for a cup of tea.

The castle is a fascinating mish-mash of military eras that still has echoes of its life as a Tudor stronghold that once imprisoned Charles I, a Napoleonic fort and then a World War II gun battery.

The New Forest has 43 miles of coastline and 300 square miles of woodland and moorland to trudge across or stare at from a pub garden (we chose the latter option after a relatively short spell of the former).

Milford is a great base to explore all of this from. Close by is the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu, a maritime museum on the coast at Bucklers Hard, The New Forest Centre at Lyndhurst and cruises around the Isle of Wight in the summer from Keyhaven. Then there are long walks, cycle tracks, pony trekking and a myriad of watersports.

A weekend is not long enough to take a fraction of this in, but B&Bs like Harvest House, the ease with which you can travel there and the friendly welcome to be had mean we will certainly be back soon.

TRAVEL FACTS

• Harvest House (Attic Room pictured right) offers a minimum of two nights’ accommodation at between £84 and £96 a night. More details at www.harvesthouse-newforest.co.uk
• More information about the New Forest can be found at www.thenewforest.co.uk