You know how it is, when a man’s gotta yomp, a man’s gotta yomp and a few days off recently allowed me and no.2 yomping buddy to hit the open road bound for…. well where exactly? We had an idea that we would like a view and since we hadn’t been there before and had been told a view could be had, we set off for Acres Down to the west of Lyndhurst.

We had one of those easy walks books which seem to have been written by a not so retired SAS sergeant major, but it seemed straight forward enough. I have mentioned before to beware of books that use trees as landmarks, particularly if they are over a couple of years old. Well here’s another proviso. If the book doesn’t define what it considers to be a path, with maps drawn by what appears to be a five year old, don’t start on the walk. See the trouble with the country is that lots of other creatures are walking around when humans aren’t and are inclined to make their own paths and not let the SAS sergeant major know so he can ask his five year old to add it to the map. As a consequence of which, you may well find that you miss a path (or two) or count too many paths (or three), and end up somewhere you were neither expecting nor have much knowledge of.

In fact if you continue around a hill too far, it’s just about possible you might end up going in the wrong direction. Now I’m not saying that is what happened, but I am grateful that there was a straight road that we could orientate ourselves to from the five year olds map. And march along in the wrong direction. Of course if we had gone the right way we wouldn’t have met the very friendly elderly couple in their camper van parked up having a cup of tea. And wouldn’t have been offered a lift back to the car by them. Mind you we may well have managed to get back to the car ourselves in that time, but it’s nice to meet new people isn’t it? The view will have to wait for another day.

One of the things I love at Christmas is seeing bright coloured lights strung in the streets as well as in homes. However for the last couple of years the Christmas lights in Lymington have been well, virtually non-existent really. This is in stark contrast to Lyndhurst and to a lesser degree Brockenhurst, further to the north in the Forest. Apparently this is in no small way due to legislation policed by everyone’s friends at the HSE preventing us from hurting ourselves. What a good job they do.

This year however, under the auspices of the newly formed Lymington & Pennington Christmas Lights Committee, we have indeed seen the light(s) and had a modicum of civic pride restored. Lym is always going to be at a disadvantage due to the fact we have a wide enough High Street to hold a substantial market in every Saturday. Handy for shopping, but a bit on the wide side for stringing lots of lights across without attracting significant cost and apparently also some risk. Now we have lights and decorated Christmas trees from the top of St Thomas’s Street all the way down with extra lights in the trees outside the Post Office. In truth the effect is best at the narrow St Thomas’s Street end, but very pretty none the less.

In contrast Lyndhurst High Street is one lane and narrow and whilst that doesn’t allow much in the way of a street market, it does make it look almost magical when it gets dark and the lights come on. In fact we normally go for a stroll down the high street sometime before Christmas just for the simple pleasure of the experience. The high life it may not be, but utterly charming it most certainly is. I recall being told once that there are two ways of missing something, either it goes by too fast or you go by too fast. This is merely our attempt to slow down a tad during a season which seems to go full-pelt and handbrake turns into Christmas Day. It’s doing things like this that maintain what passes for our sanity at this time of the year.