New Forest (Slow Travel)

Named one of the world's top 10 destinations for outdoors enthusiasts in the 2022 TripAdvisor Traveller's Choice Awards. Part of the award-winning Slow Travel series.

This thoroughly updated and expanded second edition is the only comprehensive travel guidebook to the New Forest, a compact and increasingly popular national park barely 90 minutes from London. Whether you're a walker, cyclist, wildlife lover, family or foodie, you'll find detailed coverage of a wide range of attractions and practical information to make the most of your time here—from fine hotels to campsites where grazing ponies may nose at your tent flap.

The New Forest's free-roaming animals are central to its enchantment and charm. Ponies and cows routinely halt traffic, while donkeys peer into shop windows. Beyond these iconic residents, truly wild creatures abound: the region is home to all six of the UK's native reptile species and its largest population of Dartford warblers, with Sites of Special Scientific Interest covering over half the national park. Yet despite its name, the landscape surprises with remarkable variety—from ancient broad-leaved woodlands established as hunting grounds by William the Conqueror, to towering conifers at Rhinefield Arboretum, miles of heathland, the yachting town of Lymington, and distinctive villages from 13th-century Beaulieu with its abbey and National Motor Museum, to Burley, infamous for witchcraft.

Experienced travel writer and local resident Emily Laurence Baker guides you behind the scenes to reveal the 'working Forest'—explaining how various organisations manage the land, how grazing animals have shaped it for centuries, and how the 'commons' system functions. Through interviews with local people, from butchers to conservationists and verderers, she brings the New Forest to life, making this the must-have guide for all visitors to this beguiling region.