THIS TIME NEXT WEEK....

.....we should have been going to the New Forest for a week `back home.`  We have holidayed in the Forest on a number of occasions over the years, partly because it is the part of the world where I spent most of my boyhood but partly also because it`s a really lovely area to explore.  So we were looking forward to another week in the village of Burley but of course that has been cancelled for obvious reasons.

I never tire of revisiting the Forest - as a boy growing up in Hythe on the western shore of Southampton Water the Forest was literally just up the road and that, along with the sea at the bottom of our garden, made it an idyllic place to grow up a bit.  There are just so many places and things to see in the Forest that it`s difficult to find a photo that is in anyway `representative` of what the area means - at least to me.

I came across this one which I took on our last visit and it shows the village of Beaulieu - I called it rush hour - and it is a village that has so much to commend it.  Quite apart from its picturesqueness it boasts a wonderful cafe, which specialises in enormous gooey cakes and splendid coffee, so I`ll miss that next week (and have to wait until this time next year which is when our week in Burley has been rearranged.)