Tranquil moments where the forest meets the sea

New Forest South Only on private land can we experience a sense of remoteness that was once commonplace here

Small heath butterflies flirt among the delicate pink flowers of sea-spurrey. A solitary meadow brown flashes past, wind-driven and quickly lost against the muddy crust of dried-out estuarine pools.

There's bright blue sky overhead, but the spinnaker-ballooning yachts out in the Solent lean over on a choppy white-tipped sea. Oystercatchers hunker down in the gulleys above which three forest ponies graze. Their movement disturbs a group of shelduck sheltering in a dip that bob fleetingly into sight.