Monday 17 June 2013

Rhinefield Drive

Monday 17th June 2013

We had a really good three mile walk this afternoon from the Blackwater car park on the Rhinefield Drive in the New Forest.  We saw plenty of wildlife and no people!  This is a very popular area at weekends, somewhere we would therefore avoid at weekends!  We saw various sized groups of deer and a couple out on their own, one of whom we didn't see until we were quite close to it - I'm not sure who was more surprised us or the deer. 

From the Rhinefield Drive road.

Foxgloves have started to come out - another favourite of mine.

In amongst the trees.

A very handsome common toad - nowhere near an obvious source of water.

A painted lady butterfly on a rhododendron flower.  Apparently some rhododendrons are diseased in the New Forest and are causing problems in other shrubs so are being destroyed.

We were very pleased to successfully find a geocache in the middle of a very boggy area, at one point it looked like we were going to have to give up but we found a way round in the end.  At the cache we were surrounded by cattle and ponies, lots of them, but they weren't interested in us in the least.  On the way back we came across a lovely toad who did make me jump, but no amount of coaxing would make it jump!  We saw a jay, a green woodpecker and various small birds, then it was back through the arboretum with the very tall trees to the car park.

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