Escape to the New Forest

No, not escape from the EU, but from the awful result of the referendum. We took off for the day to a new area of the country for me, the New Forest and very pretty it is too.  It was relaxing to be driven through the leafy lanes and to see the ponies. There are a lot of posh houses and we had the chance to see many as I inexpertly misdirected my sister several times and gave us a longer-than-necessary tour around the villages.

It was a weird sort of day, of course, but the pocket of green helped calm us after a few rants, and being out fonting was the perfect thing to do.  Four villages had been chosen, first of all Minstead, which proved tricky to get into. We drove down a lane that said Road Closed and indeed it was closed, so we chose to walk through and look for the church on foot. We tried using our sixth sense but after wandering down several roads and also asking some passers by, we realised the church was miles off and that we needed the car. So we stopped for a sandwich, under a tree, in a peaceful spot.

The church itself was quite weird, looking more like a house than a church. It was a bit unusual inside as well but the font was a cracker and reminded me slightly of Steeple Langford as it had four rectangular sides each with its own picture. But the pictures were more elaborate here and harder to make out on two sides. One, described by the church as Jesus's baptism, was three figures - but very hard to see who they were or what they were doing. One looked like it was holding a hammer, or was it holding a person? One looked like an alien. One was possibly an angel with wings. A second side had strange designs too, hard to make out. A third had a rather appealing animal, with two bodies and one head, which is not unlike other animals we have seen. The head looked very like the Cheshire cat, with a grinning mouth.  The fourth side was sadly hard to see as it was too close to a wall. It was, to our delight, a long-bodied but appealing Lamb of God, holding the requisite staff in one foot.

"Are you doing the flowers?" asked a woman who came in, who somehow reminded me of Samantha Cameron. I ignored her because it was such a stupid question,  but she repeated it and we both answered no. Obviously not as the flowers were done and sitting on top of the font. It became an amusing line to ask each other in the other churches we visited during the day.

Second stop was Landford, which also proved awkward to find, giving the day an edge of weirdness. We stopped for a lemonade at a carvery inhabited by only 2 men at the bar and the landlady, and I dared to ask where the church was. The older bloke kindly told us but neither of us really understood what he said. I thought he said something about Royal Gibraltar, the referendum still on my mind, but knew he couldn't have done. After much driving around we chanced upon an Indian restaurant, the Royal Jaipur, on the main road and I was quite chuffed I wasn't going completely mad. The church itself was away from the village and sadly locked, but there were two nice Norman capitals either side of the door, which we drew.

We moved on to Breamore, just outside the New Forest, again stumped as to the whereabouts of the church (I was just using the road map which let's face it, is useless for finding churches). We found this one through a mixture of luck and sense, as there was a "Breamore House" on the map and often posh houses are near the church and luckily there it was. It was a sweet Saxon church with tall windows, and a lovely Saxon archway inside with some writing over the top. Sadly my drawing of it was less than accurate so it looked very odd. There was some fine "ropework" carving as well.

Final stop was Damerham, north east of Fordingbridge. The church was on its own again, stuck down a lane. In the porchway was a rather wonderful tympanum of a horse and knight, vanquishing some poor soul down on the ground. We agreed the carver must have liked horses or certainly observed them well as the horse was accurately depicted. We particularly liked the way its hoof rested on the person lying down, who appeared to be holding an axe. There was attention to detail, as the horse had some decoration and the people's clothes did too. Rather pleasingly my own interpretation of it came out well.