OLD HAUNTS ..

I`m going to be away for the next week or so, staying in the village of Sway, deep in the New Forest.   In many ways it will be like retracing the steps of over half a century ago.   Despite being born at a very early age in neighbouring Dorset, I spent most of WW2 in a house at Blackfield, between Hythe and Calshot - see the map above, where my mother and I stayed with her sister and her husband.  

I still have vivid memories of the nightly bombing raids on the docks at Southampton and sleeping under the stairs with a junior set of earplugs.    After the war ended and my father returned from five years in a PoW camp, we moved the short distance to Hythe, where we spent many very happy years as a family in that `village by the sea.`

Of course, I`m still a frequent visitor to Hythe and to Southampton but I`m looking forward to once again exploring the New Forest and the Hampshire coast, which has so much to offer.   Who knows, we may also venture back into Dorset, check out my birthplace and revisit old haunts including Lulworth Cove and Purbeck 


Here`s hoping the weather is as kind to us next week as my aunt and uncle were all those years ago.