When you’re given a whole day to potter about with your partner, do you:
With Shades in tow, we opted for D. It was a bright and sunny May day, and so we headed to the New Forest as I know of a lovely pub near Ashurst Road station, and there’s also a lovely forest walk too. The lovely forest walk takes walkers along the railway line to a patch of forest known as Deerleap, which then crosses over the line via bridge and goes on to a part of the Beaulieu river. There we got to watch many dogs enjoying the sun, and then some horses come down for a drink. We then had worked up an appetite so raided the pub for lunch. We then headed to our next destination. For ages I had been meaning to go and pup Chandler’s Ford station, but any spot of free time I had there had been engineering works, strikes, or something else getting in the way. Not today! Shades was happy to join me, so we hopped on our train from the forest, changed trains at Southampton, and then trundled down to a station I had once visited on a steam train (to celebrate the station’s reopening, I wasn’t born in the days of steam) and later visited when playing Ingress. Photo duly taken we then escaped on the next train out of there and enjoyed the rest of the day together, as lovers do. A lovely day out in the sun. Looking forward to many more of those.