Escaping Black Friday...

STUPIDLY long walk/trek across the New Forest, before sunrise, from the A36 Salisbury to Southampton road in the north, to the A338 south of Fordingbridge on the Bournemouth to Salisbury road, in the west, not getting home until after dark.

Probably around 15 miles, more if you did what I do - ie, not follow the main tracks, or paths and if you

Know you're in the middle of the Forest 'wilderness' if your mobile cannot get any sort of signal for 95% of the journey (no trees with transmitters hidden in the branches in these parts)

You (try to) follow lovely wooded glades, wonderfully hidden by carpets of fallen leaves but which leave you not knowing of the squelching muddy boggy bits you have to squelch through - I gave my presence away to a herd of fallow does doing this, thus missing shots of them

You fall down a steep bank, winding you 

Grazing ponies barely look up at you as you pass them - in the touristy areas they know that people unresponsibly feed them, which is bad for them plus even worse, making them congregate around cars and traffic, where they can get killed. 

You see just two horse riders and two cyclists for the first 90% of the day

And you manipulate and carry a monster heavy 120-400mm lens for most of your pictures, including this delightful view of these pony trekkers and so-happy dogs, towards the western edge of the Forest, a place called Windmill Hill. They were only just visible to the naked eye. You could sense their freedom and so lovely against that wonderful backdrop. 

Frankly, I've been rather unwell since I got back (purely through exhaustion!) and have only just looked at any images, lots of late autumn colour, the wonderful babbling Latchmoor Brook winding its way through Eyeworth Wood.