Every great adventure has a bit of ferry travel – well this one is really easy. Norleywood Enclosure (Or anywhere convenient) into Lymington, Ferry to Yarmouth then a must-see Garden visit to Farringford House. To complete the loop we do the long climb up to the Needles and back to Yarmouth in time for fish-&-chips
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[Music] well hello again here’s a wonderful trip that we’re going to do today we’re actually taking a trip from the New Forest where we were staying and we’re going to cycle down to Lmington then across to Yarmouth and we’re going to take a trip around the western edge of the aisle of white and we’re particularly planning to go and visit some friends we’ve got at Faringford House so this is the route in a bit more detail so we’re going to start at the Norywood car park which is just a couple of kilometers really north of Lmington and then we’ll cycle down that avoids paying a fortune for parking cycle down towards Lmington catch the ferry you need to allow yourself about an hour and a little bit buy your ticket in advance it’s cheaper and if you’re pensioners it’s much cheaper we go across to Yarmouth then we’re going to cycle down the Freshwater Yarmouth cycle path which is like an old Roman road uh we get round into Freshwater Bay then into Faringford House and then we head off up towards the Needles and then we decided to come back along the west coast via Totland not quite so pretty we were to do it again we’d find a different route home i would recommend when you’re in the aisle of white sticking to those darker green places which are very much more attractive so here we are at Norywood and it’s a wonderfully quiet place to start and we leave the car park we turn out onto the road and then we’re just going to cut down towards Lmington that’s quite an easy route we did make a bit of a misturn at one point cuz we overshot our path it’s quiet back roads so don’t worry too much about traffic at this time in the morning and it will take you there all the way on quiet back roads so we follow our way around the back of this housing state and we come straight into the ferry port and then you check in and then we work our way forward and I really enjoy ferry rides they’re a great part of any cycle adventure don’t tie your bikes up on these ones you just leave them [Music] we travel across you can see the old fort in the distance and it’s a really [Music] short journey it’s only about 40 minutes across from one side to the other and then it really depends on the way in which they decided to work on the day where the bikes get off first or whether the cars get off first so on our way there uh the bikes were able to leave in advance so we stopped and looked at the marina used toilets that were there and then we headed off [Music] what we’re aiming for is to find that fresh water to Yama cycle path so we head through the town and then it appears to come to a dead halt and it’s at that point that you can join the path so we turn left and work our way down now this is all gravel all the way down here so it’s a mixture of surfaces the surfaces in Yarmouth are okay they’re much better than they are anywhere else in the UK but uh this is gravel so you do need you could do it on modern 28 road tires but it’s you know a little bit grumbly in places [Music] so we’re heading our way south there’s wonderful views on the right which I wasn’t really able to capture that much and it’s a very popular route so just be a little bit careful about the other users make sure you ring your bell but occasionally it opens up and we stopped here and had a little look around had a cup of tea spoke to a little old lady sitting on a bench and then we headed back off towards fresh water so it’s not much further here there’s occasionally you have to cross a road and when we get to the end here we join the road into fresh water now this is a little bit busier so you do need a degree of confidence uh you’d be okay with teenage kids and others but we work our way around and just be aware that at Faringford House there is no coffee available so once you get into uh Freshwater here it you may want to stop there or there’s a wonderful little coffee shop just a little bit further on so we carried on and we stopped at this thatched church that turned up and there’s a range of different things going on there i’ll just sort of rush through those bits but wonderful little thatched church and then just head your way up the hill now don’t think that the aisle of white is lacking in gradient this is actually quite steep not as steep as some of the others when you get to the Needles but we work our way up past Faringford Golf Course and then we turned in towards Faringford House and there’s bike parking just over there and we actually stopped because we were visiting somebody there but Faringford House was originally owned by Tennyson and it has been completely restored into the way in which it would be authentic for him with modern allowances so it’s open to tourists it’s not National Trust or anything like that they do have toilets but they don’t have tea coffee refreshments that sort of thing it is very much a serious uh pilgrimage location if you like for those that love Tennyson and his works so here’s the house i won’t show you any photos from the inside go and visit their website for that um but it’s only recently been opened in the last decade or so and the gardens were once I think it was an old uh holiday camp with a load of holiday homes and they have been opened out by the new head gardener so it’s beautifully maintained really lovely grounds and definitely worth a visit and I would encourage anybody who’s in the southwest of the aisle of white to pop in i would say you know it’s it’s a good competitor for Osborne House but here are the gardens remember this was absolutely nothing 10 years ago beautiful and they’re an award-winning garden so those of you that are members of the RHS may want to go along i think they’re a partner garden now as well so uh lots to encourage you to go along [Music] heat heat [Music] okay so we’re now going to head off towards the needles so we leave Faringford House and we rejoin the road [Music] now it’s quite quiet but look at the quality of the surface you They hardly ever seem to dig it up and when they do they make a really nice patch of it so much better than you’ll find in Surrey where we’re from occasionally there’s cars parked on the side which can be a bit of a nuisance but that’s because the roads are narrower because they’re not really heavily used so we climb up some of these hills and to be honest most of the way to the needles is a climb but you you soon enter open countryside and it’s really quite beautiful and I would say in some ways it’s equivalent to being in Pemrookshire in that you’ve got these rolling hills but quite high hedges on each side so you can’t always see over the top so it’s quite nice when you do get over and you get a view in the distance we stopped there uh and just got a picture really we were watching the buzzards flying around now we’ve entering into the bottom of uh Alam really we’ve come through the town of Alam and now we’re working our way up this road now it’s not really open to cars unless they’re disability mobility vehicles or whether they’re the buses but it is a long and fairly arduous climb but the views are great you can see back to Alen Bay if you look over your right shoulder and occasionally we would stop and have a little look but you can see how steep it is there and it just continues to go on and on but it’s not hard occasionally even have to make a way ready for the bus but we’re going to work our way up to the higher of the forts so this is the original lookout and radio station at the top here and we had a good look around and we were looking for somewhere to stop and have a bit of a picnic but although the views are absolutely fantastic up there on Tennyson and West High Down we found that it was just incredibly blowy and that is one of the issues but there’s Alam Bay i don’t know if years ago they used to collect various different sands and you could get a little bottle with different colored sands in i don’t know if they do that anymore anyway so we headed back down a little bit and we went to the fort that was there and had a look at the various different things if you’re a National Trust member it is free to get in and we walked our way up to the original lighthouse that’s through a little tunnel that was a bit of fun and then we head off back towards the ferry so we’re leaving that climb there and then we’ve got a long descent and actually just as a warning our brake shoes started to give way partway through even though I’d serviced them and they were fairly new they were breaking up so it really is important that your your brakes are in good condition for some of those descents they are quite steep anyway we’re back on the main road and this is the west road that heads its way up uh uh through the island and in all truth it’s not actually a particularly nice bit of road the views are great but there is traffic coming past at a regular basis and then you’re through housing estates and other things now for those of you that are roadies that are used to that you will enjoy it more but we took a little bypass here and we went to have a look at the sea from down there and then we headed back through this housing estate and rejoin the road but we’re literally just round the corner this is not a long ride from uh around the island so we head back now we’re on the outskirts of Yarmouth really and dropping down towards the town and the ferry port and then just as you sort of reach into the town then you will find that you’ll probably come to a halt because of the bridges so we’re following along again another climb back up and then we can descend down the other side which is quite a long and fairly gentle descent so we’re now dropping down towards Yarmouth and you can see it opening up and then we get to this swing bridge which actually allows boats to go through underneath so it’s not for trains it’s for boats and then you’re at the ferry port now what we did was rather than stop there at the ferry port we had a bit of time we decided we were going to buy some fish and chips and we went to the blue crab and then we came back got on the ferry and headed our way back to the car so a second ferry journey and it was a little bit quicker coming back actually it’s really nice it was a lovely summer’s evening [Music] push your way off and then almost immediately leaving you’re on the back road ready to get back and you can see it’s a bit darker here the camera is struggling to get a bit of sharpness but we headed our way back i’ve speeded it up a little bit to promote this bit and then we’re back at the car park very very quickly turning in a nice cup of tea and just sitting there listening to the song thrushes singing their little hearts out in the evening what a better way to spend the day so really lovely trip and we can see here the full journey we only did about 35k to be honest uh the whole time and some of that was cycling around inside various different places so it’s a great journey lovely day out if you’re staying in the New Forest I would really recommend taking that ferry across very cheap if you’re a pensioner but do enjoy it and Faringford House is definitely a visit it’s wonderful so thank you very much i’ll see you on the next visit uh next trip which will probably be in the New Forest again bye for now