A sofa day for the cats

Rain pounded on the roof tiles and the garden was no place for cats today. Curled up together on their blanket, Ginger Man and the Forest Cat slept the day away to the sound of logs crackling on the fire.



I did not go looking for these two boys. Some years ago and a year apart, each of them appeared in the hay barn, thin, with dull, dirty coats and scared yellow eyes. Hunting for mice and finding shelter from the cold.



The Ginger Man came first. I had seen him several times that winter. Up in the woods, as I rode or walked on the hill. A frightened streak of ginger and white that ran across my path. I thought that he must be a feral cat from the farm along the lane. He appeared in the barn in early spring. Terrified and hungry, he would slope off into the hedge with ears flat against his head. It soon became apparent that he was injured. A raw, red wound that showed beneath his left front leg and stretched up into his armpit.



I decided that food was the best way to catch this poor little cat. Plates of best cat food tempted him down from the hay. He learned to come to the rattle of a box of cat biscuits. Within a few days, we had progressed to meal times in the greenhouse, where I put a cat bed lined with old jumpers and he soon learned that this was a place to eat and sunbathe in safety. Gradually, I was allowed to touch him and give him a gentle stroke.At last I persuaded him into a cat carrier ( one nasty cat bite to my thumb later!) and off he went to the vets. They sedated him in a "cat crush" cage for feral animals and then he was operated on under anaesthetic.



Ginger Man never looked back. He was introduced to the house and gradually learned to live with the dogs and my other cats. It took him five weeks before he purred for the first time, and I almost cried. He is my most faithful cat and is there on my lap, or on a chair beside me, wherever I am in the house. He is still terrified of men. He tolerates my OH, but a sudden movement and Ginger Man is gone! We tried to trace his owners but no one had reported him missing. He was,most likely, dumped in a forest car park and left to fend for himself as the winter came.

The Forest Cat also came from nowhere. A much more confident cat, but thin and hungry, with nowhere to go home. No one had lost him, no one reported him missing, so he came into the house and stayed. These two boys are still young cats. They are the greatest friends. They play chase up and down the stairs, they race around the garden together and then curl up together to sleep in the same warm bed. Forest Cat loves to wash the Ginger Man`s face. Together they tease old Mrs Cat who slinks off to sleep on her own. Ginger Man pats her bottom as she passes and recieves a disgruntled hiss in return.

Watermeadows at Ibsley

Midday on a cold December Thursday. On my way home from Fordingbridge, I decided to explore the back lanes and find a quieter way down the Avon Valley. A narrow road south became a one track lane. A way across farm land designed for a horse and cart, not for a modern car. High hedges bordered the lane and views across flat farmland were glimpsed through gateways.

Turning down hill, pastureland stretched away towards the river . Water shone in a ribbon of silver and spilled out across the fields. Bare trees stood out against the sky where storm clouds billowed in across the land. Past the hamlet of Harbridge, with its pretty church and neighbouring cottages and farms.

The Victorians changed the nave and chancel of All Saints Church, but parts of the fifteenth century tower remain. Harbridge is an ancient settlement, mentioned in the eleventh century Doomsday Book. Now, much of the land of Harbridge and nearby Ibsley and Ellingham still belongs to the Somerby Estate and the Earl of Normanton.

Watermeadows in flood, to the south of the lane to Ibsley. A pair of Mute Swans stood resting together in a shallow floodstream. In the summer, these meadows dry out and are grazed by cattle. Watermeadow wild flowers, such as Ragged Robin and Meadowsweet, survive their winter submersion to grow and flower again when summer returns.

The Purbeck stone ramparts of the eighteenth century Ibsley Bridge across the River Avon. This lovely bridge joins the parishes of Harbridge and Ibsley. Today I could not have taken photos of it from the meadows without being up to my knees in water!

A view from the bridge. Looking back across the watermeadows towards Harbridge.

North from the bridge is a tight meander in the river. Another pair of Mute Swans swim upstream.

Looking south, angry river water spilled and foamed over Ibsley wier.

For hundreds of years, little has changed in these river scenes by the Ibsley meadows. Sometime in the 1880s, a little girl was born in an Ibsley cottage. Her father was a dairyman who cared for the cattle that grazed the lush river meadows. Her mother had several younger children and she also helped with dairy work, with skimming cream and making cheese. That little girl was my grandmother, Rose, who grew up by the river at the Forest`s edge and played "house" with her brothers and sisters in the bean rows of their cottage garden.

In later childhood, my grandmother moved with her family to another riverside village to the west of Salisbury. Her father was dairyman to another watermeadow herd.

In one of these villages, one of my grandmother`s brothers was drowned in a swollen river. I know no more details than that. As I stood on the bridge today, watching the swirling flood pass beneath , I wondered if this was the place where he drowned . Is that why the family moved away? Was it just too hard for Great Grandfather to live in this place and tend the grazing cattle on the banks of a river where his child had fallen to an early death?

First Frost

A fine, bright, first frost on the morning fields.Beeches are bare in the hedgerow but their wet , bronze leaves lie crisp underfoot. Yellow-brown oak leaves wait for the next wind . White ice crystals stand sparkling on fence rail and wooden gate.

Old Dog snuffles the thawing grass.Trotting, tail high, through bracken and over frozen puddles on the path. Sniffing clear, sharp air and ears alert for a distant bark from a farm dog on the hill .

Fingers of ice reach out over lawn and leaf.

In ungrazed pasture, drifts of frost-painted oak leaves lie where the north wind has left them. Sun lightens the grass. Mist rises as the thaw begins.

Winter Evening by John Clare

The crib stock fothered, horses suppered up,

And cows in sheds all littered down in straw,

The threshers gone, the owls are left to whoop,

The ducks go waddling with distended craw

Through little hole made in the hen-roost door,

And geese with idle gabble never o`er

Bait careless hog until he tumbles down,

Insult provoking spite to noise the more;

While fowl high-perched blink with contemptuous frown

On all the noise and bother heard below;

Over the stable-ridge in crowds,the crow,

With jackdaws intermixed, known by their noise,

To the warm woods behind the village go;

And whistling home for bed go weary boys.

John Clare (1793 - 1864)

The Eco Houses at Anderwood

Yesterday, on our walk in Anderwood, we passed the new Sustainable Homes which have recently been built. This building comprises two semi detached houses which each have three bedrooms. Each home also includes a wooden barn and outbuildings.



These homes were designed to be built with the least possible impact on the New Forest environment. They are rented by practising New Forest commoners. There is a shortage of affordable homes to buy or rent in the New Forest. Many of the traditional cottages and farms would have been homes to commoners of past times. Today, those homes command high prices that may be beyond the means of a commoning farmer.



Many traditional homes have been bought by people moving into the Forest. This is a popular area for city people who retire to a New Forest cottage. A high proportion of Forest properties are second/weekend homes or holiday homes rented to tourists. Over 40% of the homes in a nearby village are second homes and are empty for most of the year. Not only does this impact upon the community of a village, but it means that the descendants of those earlier New Forest commoners struggle to find homes that they can afford , within the Forest where they keep their animals.



The Forestry Commission has built these sustainable homes at Anderwood in an attempt to meet the demand for homes for commoners. It is hoped that this project will be the first of many.



As explained on the poster photographed below, The wooden framed houses were built from Douglas Firs harvested from the Anderwood plantation.





The wooden houses have facilities for Grey Water Harvesting. Rainwater is collected, used, filtered and then re-used.



Geothermal Heating pipes have been installed, which heat the houses using heat from within the earth.



There are Solar Panels on the roof which produced solar energy.

More details about sustainable homes can be found on the Forestry Commission website.


Here is a traditional Victorian keeper`s cottage not far from the newer homes.

The view from the old keeper`s cottage, along the wooded lane towards Lyndhurst.

An hour in Anderwood Inclosure

A late November Saturday of low light and grey skies. As I write this, heavy rain batters the roof tiles above my head and streams of water run out of leaf-clogged gutters. It is five pm . It has been dark for almost an hour.



Earlier today, we walked in the quiet of Anderwood; a seventy hectare inclosure where the Forestry Commission grows and harvests trees.



Anderwood was first enclosed and planted with oak in 1811. At that time, during the Napoleonic Wars against France, the New Forest had provided fine oak for the building of warships. Many of the wooden sailing ships of Nelson`s Navy were built at Bucklers Hard, on the Beaulieu River and not far from the English Channel and the Naval sea ports. It was important to replant young oaks to replace those felled in time of war, so Anderwood was one of the areas chosen for this purpose.



Beech and sweet chestnut are also grown here. The photograph above shows a small plantation of young beech trees, growing in the shadow of tall, mature trees.

Unpollarded beeches growing tall, straight trunks towards the sky. The rust brown of wet bracken underlies the trees.

This New Forest mare was standing on the woodland edge with her family, a small group of bay ponies who looked very much alike . Mother and daughter groups are common and the ponies will often pair-bond for life with a relative or friend.

Foraging for soft twigs in the browsing line of lower branches beneath the trees. The ponies have strong molar teeth which enable them to grind twigs, gorse and holly when winter grass is insufficient for their needs.

The pony on the right shows how efficient her long, thick coat has been in draining away the earlier rain. Her back was still damp, but the hairs on her abdomen and legs were dry, warm and fluffed up against the cold.

This well-covered old gelding dozed and slept on the edge of the family group. His left hind leg was bent and that hoof was resting, pointed to the ground. Inside the stifle (anatomical knee) joints of a horse, are a web of ligaments called the Stay Apparatus, which enables that leg to fix and form a prop for the animal so that it can sleep standing up.

In the 1940s, many of the New Forest inclosures were planted with conifers as a relatively short-term harvest crop. These conifers, mostly pine and Douglas Fir, are now mature and are gradually being harvested by the Forestry Commission. This area shows land which has recently been cleared. The land had been dug and turned over by heavy machinery and will need time to recover, although the green leaves of clumps of foxgloves were growing amidst the sodden wasteland. When new planting takes place, there may be Douglas Firs and Norway Spruces in this place.

Ponies graze the edge of an area of woodland clearance. In the chill November wood, no birds were singing.

Bunches of young silver birch twigs, harvested and ready for collection.

Taking the dogs home along the forestry track, beneath tall conifers on the edge of mixed woodland. Last night`s rain gave the woods a dank smell of wet leaves and rotting wood. Sometimes the soft underscent of pines came sweetly out of the spruce plantations beside the gravel lane.

Bitter for Sweet

Bitter for Sweet

Summer is gone with all its roses,
Its sun and perfumes and sweet flowers,
Its warm air and refreshing showers:
And even Autumn closes.

Yea, Autumn`s chilly self is going,
And winter comes which is yet colder;
Each day the hoar frost waxes bolder
And the last buds cease blowing.

Christina Rossetti

Rainclouds gather over the Bronze Age burial mounds on the plain below Beacon Hill.

The first photograph of a setting sun in a dark grey sky, was taken today just before 3.30 pm. It has been one of the shortest days and the daylight hours have been wet, dreary and increasingly cold.

Christina Rossetti`s poem is not one of her most memorable ones, but somehow it captures that lowering of the spirits that comes on an early winter`s day of sullen skies and chill rain.