Hill Cottage Farm Touring Caravan Park

The comely River Avon flows through nearby Fordingbridge for comely walks along the riverbanks and to snap pics of the seven-arched town bridge, spanning the Avon at this spot in one form or another since the 13th century. Longer walks are around via the Avon Valley Path, a trail of 35 miles from Salisbury to Christchurch which runs through Fordingbridge and on to Ringwood on an eight and a half mile stretch. If you can’t be faffed walking it, or want to save strolls for among the ponies of the New Forest, Ringwood is about 15 minutes’ drive from Hill Cottage Farm Touring Caravan Park: get there on a Wednesday if poss to shop in the market held here since the Middle Ages. The New Forest is five minutes’ drive away with several days’ worth of indoor and outdoor attractions to try including museums (the National Motor Museum and Nelson’s Buckler's Hard), old villages, 150 Scheduled Ancient Monuments, Beaulieu Abbey, pony hacks and a whole heap more: stop off first at the Lyndhurst visitor and exhibition centre deep in the forest for info and inspiration. Also nearby, Moors Valley Country Park has a lot more of the same and three Go Ape! centres to swing or Segway in and among the trees. Look out for reptiles at both (the New Forest is home to all three native British snake species), but if the slithery ones prove a bit shy, slide over to Lyndhurst’s New Forest Reptile Centre which houses all native species of snakes, lizards, frogs and toads. (But don’t tell that to the eagle-eyed and carnivorous inhabitants of Liberty's Owl, Raptor and Reptile Centre at Ringwood.) Comely and award-winning Salisbury is about 10 miles from Hill Cottage – a must for the cathedral, ghost tours and its 14th-century pub The Haunch of Venison; the kids will be morbidly fascinated by the pub’s mummified hand on display. Eight miles to the south from Salisbury is another must, Stonehenge, and about half an hour’s drive from Hill Cottage will take you to Bournemouth, Christchurch and the Solent for day trips to the Isle of Wight. From Bournemouth head west for yet another must in the Jurassic Coast, starting its mega 95-mile run eight miles south west from Bournemouth at Studland Bay.