The sun shone all weekend, the breeze was enough to keep away the midges and the woods were totally un-explored to me – all in all it was a recipe for a great weekend.
With a three day weekend and a whole National Park to explore i was looking forward to getting out into the woods. Being about as south as you can get i wasn’t expecting much and certainly no hills but i did find some very chilled out trails winding their way through beautiful woodland. The sheer quantity of wildlife blew me away, just a few minutes from a main road or village centre there were deer, foxes, birds and beautiful trees and flowers.
During one spin out into the woods i came across 30+ deer, two foxes, two green woodpeckers, loads of wild horses and an uncountable number of birds i couldn’t identify. That said, while the woods are huge the trails you can ride on are limited to about 100miles worth. On leaving the forest on monday i had a great chat with a guy from the Forestry Commision on human impacts on the forest.
The New Forest is alot of woodland but the visitor numbers are HUGE, because of that we’re stomping (or rolling) around the woods disturbing the wildlife. In recent years the FC have seen a major decline in ground nesting birds and that’s been atributed to walkers and their dogs.
With all that woodland it might come as a surpise that MTBers are limited to the gravel trails and busier areas. All that woodland must have stacks of great trails in right? Probably true but the big problem with us bike riders is we travel quicker and therefor can get out into the more remote parts of the woods, you know, the bits that walkers don’t bother going to, the nice quiet bits that the wildlife like to live in. So because of that the FC limit where we can ride our bikes to keep us away from the wildlife and you know, as its their home and just our playground i’m fine with that.
So if you’re heading off down to the New Forest take your bike for a gentle spin around the woods but if you want to go ‘off piste’ lock the bike up and head out on foot.
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