This afternoon Jackie drove me into the forest. She spotted a possibly sleeping foal on the verge of Wilverley Road and parked the car so I could walk back to find the prone animal.
As I reached it it clambered to its feet and sought
the comfort of its mother who twitched her tail, perhaps wishing to deter the suckler and necessitating a hoof-scratch.
On my return to the car I photographed the woodland landscape,
followed by that at Wilverley Pit which accommodated its own scattered herd.
The South Weirs telephone box just outside Brockenhurst has now become a public book exchange as have so many now surplus to requirements because no-one uses them any more.
Another foal on the opposite side of the road from the box took great interest in the roadside furniture, essentially traffic calming devices such as the narrowing of the access negotiated by this
Vintage Hot Rod Society member.
Another foal lay among other ponies on the outskirts of Beachern Wood,
where a squirrel stop-start jerked its way across a five-barred gate.
Ober Water is a little fuller than on our last visit, and reflects the surrounding trees, many of the roots of which have been exposed by decades of rivulets.
Some of those roots even span arms of the stream.
I reached the stage where there were so many foals about that I stopped photographing them.
This exceptional group, planted on a bend in the road and consequently causing traffic to make a very wide berth warranted further attention.
This evening we dined on more of the baked gammon; plump chicken thighs; macaroni cheese; crunchy carrots; tender runner beans; and tangy red cabbage, with which Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I drank more of the Faugères.