next door

Today we strayed over the county boundary from Dorset into Hampshire - just a bit - to where autumn can seem at its most gentle.

The New Forest still retains, in part, the feeling of being away from it all. Turn off the busy road from the west to Southampton and here is peace.






Further into the forest is the aptly named Bolderwood with heathland giving way to trees.












Adding to foreground and background, ferns are everywhere to set off countryside that the Forestry Commission cares for so well.













Trees come in all sizes and ages, some like these hundreds of years old making our own lifespan
a bit meaningless.

Like human beings, wild ponies roam in groups or singly as this one here, as the mood takes them












But it is the colours of autumn that are the attraction.








What a pity we don't take on colours like this so that we look majestic and lovely in old age instead of wrinkled and grey.

Unlike the other pictures, this last one in the same setting is by Gillian Thomas from the Geograph website; included because for me it epitomises what this blog post is all about.










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