| Date: Location: Distance: Parking: Lunch: | 18 January 2018 Balmerlawn 6.2 miles Balmerlawn car park Cat and Fiddle, Hinton Admiral ★★★☆☆ |
 Water, Water Everywhere | The persistent wet weather, with more promised for next week, makes the forest’s cycle tracks firm favourites (pun intended!) at this time of year. Today’s walk is a very minor change from the Balmerlawn 6.8 mile one on the “Wet Weather Walks” tab, that reduced it by 0.6 mile. At least the grass is growing well and the ponies are enjoying life. |
This is a very straightforward walk through an area of the forest that has recently seen a lot of forestry work being carried out.
 Logging |  You Have Been Warned |
We were extremely lucky with the weather. It was rather dull when we set off from home but was brightening up by the time we arrived at the car park opposite the Balmerlawn Hotel. It continued to remain mostly bright with a few specials of overcast but no rain throughout the walk.
Just where you see the "e" of Parkhill Inclosure there is a board telling you about the Frowhawk Ride. See Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_William_Frohawk
There is also a little more information about Frowhawk on the Clayhill Walk on 30 December 2015.
Just where you see the "e" of Parkhill Inclosure there is a board telling you about the Frowhawk Ride. See Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_William_Frohawk
There is also a little more information about Frowhawk on the Clayhill Walk on 30 December 2015.
 Always Look Up | We found some comfortable logs to sit on for our coffee, soup, chocolate, banana and orange break, taking great care to select logs that were not part of a dangerous tack. We sat and communed with nature while we looked through the trees to the lovely blue sky above. |
 Sway Tower | A few minutes after we started on the journey home the rain started. We took a slight detour to have a closer look at Sway Tower, a Grade II listed folly, 66 metres (218ft) tall with thirteen floors, 11 large rooms and a spiral staircase with over 320 steps. Here are three links with more information on this fascinating building. http://www.engineering-timelines.com/scripts/engineeringItem.asp?id=125 http://www.hampshire-life.co.uk/homes-gardens/property-market/a-look-inside-sway-tower-1-4789490 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3675352/Concrete-folly-built-eccentric-judge-hired-medium-design-tips-ghost-Sir-Christopher-Wren-goes-sale-2million |
We then drove to the Cat and Fiddle. We had already been phoned, following our earlier complaint, that they now had an urn so they could produce really hot tea. This proved, much to our approval, to be true. The Early Bird special, as much salad as you like and endless refills of pots of tea - a walkers delight.
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