Spring is finally sprung and I’m feeling rather pleased with myself for having squeezed in a briliant snowboarding weekend with the boys, my brother and his wife in Garmisch, about an hour and a bit down the autobahn from Munich. Just 2 days later and we’d have been stuck like so many people because of volcanic ash in the skies.
This weekend, having recovered from Saturday’s fun at the Oxford Folk Festival, Felix and I took ourselves down to Bournemouth to test out another leg of the walk2012 route.
As a quick recap, the route covered so far:
Weymouth – Lulworth Cove – Swanage (almost) – Bournemouth ….mind the gap… Romsey – Winchester …gap… Guildford - Walton on Thames – Putney – Stratford.
The day’s walk (about 15 miles) started where we left off at Bournemouth pier.
Felix at the pier
After tasty Harry Ramsden’s fish and chips we followed the promenade past Boscombe to Southborne.
Between Boscombe and Southborne
Here we cut inland to join the Avon Valley Path…
….which we then followed all the way to Ringwood.
It mostly is a straightforward route with a couple of awkward bits:
1. Cutting through Southborne is not too tricky, and it does take you past the Electricity museum, which was shut unfortunately but should be worth a browse if you have time.
2. The AVP moves away from the river and cuts through a housing estate. It is waymarked (not brilliant) and you can more or less follow your nose.
Springtime at the edge of the New Forest
3. There’s a horrible stretch of quite busy 60mph road and no pavement.
This last bit was a bit of a dealbreaker to be frank. It is at best unpleasant, and at times downright risky – and I want to find an alternative route.
One possibility is to go back to Worth Matravers. A return to the Square & Compass? – it’s a hard life but I’ll try to keep a stiff upper lip – it helps with the drinking 
Anyway from Worth I may be able to find a route to Ringwood by travelling north past Corfe and Wareham, and then following the Stour. This means skipping Swanage, which is a shame, but it also means avoiding the rather long drag along the beach from Poole to Southborne.
Decisions decisions… think this could be scheduled for the 2nd May bank holiday weekend as long as I can sort out the transport logistics.
The fast road was a major issue, but it was a beautiful day to be out in the countryside and there were some decent rural sights along the way…
Grand designs?
…and beautiful views along the riverside. By the way, don’t get over-excited about the name of the path – it is a different Avon …it turns out that “Avon” is ye olde English word for “river”.
end of the day near Ringwood
This time I didn’t take any video, but Felix did record the birdsong which was incredible. I will post up a copy on the blog when I get a chance. The birds on the route were incredibly loud and making some very peculiar noises – making up for the lack of aircraft perhaps!