As I type, it’s Saturday 5th March 2022. I’m feeling a bit miserable because reasons, and am hoping that writing a diary entry for Tuesday 1st March will cheer me up a bit. Let’s see.
The weather forecast for Tuesday was poor. In fact, it wasn’t great all week. Thursday looked to be the driest, so before breakfast we spent a while fighting with the Wightlink and Tesco websites, using Clubcard vouchers from the latter to pay for a return trip with car on the former. Eventually, after 3 attempts, we sorted it out - only to then be surprised that we were expected to print something out to display on the windscreen. Huh.
The staff at the Thatched Cottage Hotel are all fantastic, and they were more than happy to print the document for us while we ate our big fat fry ups. Unfortunately not all the customers are fantastic. Sitting at the table nearest the front desk, we couldn’t help but hear the entire conversation as a woman checking out complained loudly and at length about her TV - seems she couldn’t get any channels except BBC1 and BBC2 to work. This angered her so much she wouldn’t let it drop, wouldn’t accept any apologies, and outright demanded a 20% discount on her bill. “I paid for all the facilities and I couldn’t use them! I couldn’t watch the shows I want to watch!”. Unbelievable. And so relentless, they gave her the discount. Bleurgh.
Anyway. Breakfast was delicious and we popped back to the room to pick up our cameras and stuff, then set off in the car to the New Forest Wildlife Park. There was an ENORMOUS tailback heading south but our northbound route was relatively empty. Lyndhurst, en route, has a strange one way system with lanes dedicated to buses and taxis. We saw zero of either, any of the four times we drove through the town. Later, nearer the park, we drove past a pub called The Happy Cheese.
In cold, wet, miserable weather the car park at the wildlife park was virtually empty. We paid up and went in, immediately being confronted by owls.
Next, otters. These cheeky fuckers were amazingly cute.
This was indoors, in a glasshouse. Staff were repairing bits of the roof which had, we learned later, taken quite a battering during the recent storms.
Next to the Asian short-clawed otters were a pair of giant otters who, indeed, were really quite big. Between them was a load of incredibly cute mice.
And at the end of this room, ferrets and polecats.
We loitered around here, and the outside bits adjacent, for a while - feeding time was near. It was the otters getting fed, in their outdoor bit, and we were the only people present and thus had the attention of the keeper to ourselves. She told us all about this family - 2 parents, 8 kids - as well as a full rundown of storm damage. They lost 17 trees - 14 which fell, and 3 which were damaged enough to be dangerous and were taken down for safety. No animals were hurt and none escaped, but it was a close call. The Scottish wildcats have had to be removed from their enclosure because it took some serious damage, and the lynx could have escaped as a tree fell in such a way that it formed a ramp over the fence. Thankfully they stayed put.
After feeding time we explored the rest of the park. There were only about 5 or 6 other people around, but lots of ace animals.
Lots of owls, many impossible to photograph. The snowy ones were particularly amenable, however.
Bison.
In the wild boar enclosure, these are “the teenagers”. There are two huts behind them, one where the adult male is sleeping and another for the adult female.
While we’re admiring them, a keeper comes round to sort out their bedding and tell us that the adult female gave birth just a couple of days ago, and there are 6 babies. We’re extremely unlikely to see them as the mother is keeping them safe and sound and hidden away, and that’s why the teens have been kicked out of home.
8 free roaming wallabies are free roaming (this part of the park has air lock gates so they don’t escape). They are tame enough to come fairly close, but not so close as you can pet them.
Wolves. Neither of us can ever remember having seen wolves before. They look powerful and a bit scary. There’s 6 of them roaming around their big patch of land. Really quite big things.
We’re sad to have not seen the lynx, and that the wildcats and pine martens aren’t around, but it was still really good. The weather didn’t ruin it, and we enjoyed having the place basically to ourselves. The tickets allowed us to come and go as we please, so at my behest we left the park to go check out the nearby waterside town of Hythe.
The main reason I wanted to visit Hythe is because of the pier. I mean, I’d done some cursory research and the town sounded like it might be nice, and I was hoping a trip on the pier railway might be on the cards too. We parked up, in the pissing rain, and walked straight to the front.
Dear god, it’s so fucking bleak.
Like, properly miserable. Blowing a gale and colder than it was at the park. There’s no pedestrian access to the pier, it’s rail only… and we’re not certain it’s actually running, even though it’s the only way to get to the ferry service to Southampton at the far end. But regardless, the train looks … I mean, it has an air of “derelict fairground ride” about it.
Yeah, no thanks. We’ll just explore the town a bit and find something to eat. In fact, there is a waterfront kebab house - alas, closed at the time.
The town felt old. The centre reminded me of my trips to visit my gran in Littlehampton in the 80s. It seems to mostly cater to retirees. A market was packing up, next to a shop selling “roomy shoes”. The weather obviously wasn’t helping, but nothing looked pretty. We found a fish and chip shop and bought lunch.
Now, this was a good move: the food was bloody lovely.
The fish was so fall-apart soft that I found it almost impossible to eat with a wooden chip shop for, so I ended up with incredibly fishy greasy fingers. Worth it though.
We’d managed to kill enough time that heading back to the wildlife park was well timed. Upon arrival, we had about 20 minutes before feeding time at the wolves - and, amazingly, this gave us the opportunity to see the baby wild boars. 😍 Because of the much, much worse weather (it was now properly tipping down) we’d left our proper cameras in the car, so had to rely on our phones to get a pic.
They were adorable. Only 3 days old! They were out for just a minute or so before the mother shoved them back indoors.
Feeding time at the wolves was informative and interesting. The keeper doesn’t go into the enclosure, but stands with us punters - about 8 of us now - throwing chunks of raw meat over the fence. The wolves themselves don’t fight over the food, but seem to make sure they each get enough. It’s a family, we’re told, lots of brothers and sisters. Wolves have a terrible reputation for being terrifying, violent animals because movies and kids stories have done them a disservice. In the wild, they are in fact more likely to just hide away when people turn up than attack - perhaps they might attack if solo and feeling threatened, but they’re pack animals and would generally just dive underground. Thing I learnt: wolves build mounds!
10 minutes after the wolf feeding, there was lynx feeding. We hadn’t seen the lynx in the morning, but being cats, they do come out for food. They are very shy though. Two sisters live in the enclosure - we see them both at a distance, and then one comes briefly close to pick up some of the food thrown over the fence, but very fleetingly and impossible to photograph. For the next 10 minutes it stares at us from a safe distance.
Both keepers told us about plans to reintroduce these animals into the wild, and the good they would do. Lynx and wolves are good predators, and will keep populations of other animals in check.
Once we’d seen enough of the lynx, it was time to leave. Freezing cold and soaking wet, we wanted to get home. With the weather being so relentlessly awful, we had no appetite to head out for food or drink - we had plenty of our own in the cottage anyway.
The only thing left to do before an evening of dozing in front of the TV punctuated by good beer was to figure out a plan for the next day. It’s a sign of the times when the idea of getting on a train seems novel, and isn’t the default choice - but that’s what happened. It felt revelatory, and exciting: on Wednesday, let’s get on a train!