THE ROAD TO CHILDHOOD..

Sometimes I wonder whether it`s just the time of the year, when the days dwindle down to a precious few, when the deep midwinter beckons and my dotage gathers momentum;  but I often find myself looking back to the days of my New Forest childhood and wondering where the years have gone.   I came across this photo the other day and immediately it brought back wistful memories of those long ago childhood days. 

It`s a photo of Summer Lane, the New Forest road that leads from Beaulieu to Exbury and it pretty much shows the forest lanes in all their peace and tranquility, even though my earliest memories of such places may be tinted with the recollections of wartime, as I spent my first five years during the conflict of WW2.

At the time my mother and I lived in the village of Blackfield with my aunt and uncle whilst my father, having been captured at Dunkirk, was confined to a PoW camp - Stalag V111B at Lamsdorf in Silesia.  If there were any `advantages` of having my earliest years in Blackfield they may have been that in one direction, just a couple of miles away, was Lepe Beach which was used as one of the departure places for the Normandy invasion in 1944.  In the other direction, another couple of miles away, was the village of Exbury, owned by the de Rothschild family, but their estate was taken over for the headquarters of  the Naval establishment of HMS Mastadon, which  played an important role in the strategic planning for D-Day

It`s all different these days, of course - Exbury Gardens being famous for their spectacular displays of rhododendrons and azaleas - but Summer Lane hasn`t changed.  It`s a lovely drive towards Hill Top on Beaulieu Heath and each time I make the journey I get that feeling, as with all the other New Forest lanes, of being `home` again.   Click on the picture and you`ll see why perhaps........