Lyndhurst & Minstead

Lyndhurst sits at the centre of the New Forest, where a compact high street meets lanes that run straight into heathland and ancient oak woodland. The village has a pond and a parish church close to cafés, shops and traditional inns, and the New Forest Centre is on the village edge for maps and local information. Tracks and bridleways fan out from Lyndhurst, used by walkers, cyclists and horse riders, and forest ponies and cattle are a normal sight on the verges and commons that surround the settlement.

Minstead lies a few kilometres east of Lyndhurst and is made up of scattered houses, small farms and pockets of woodland linked by narrow lanes. The settlement sits within the same system of commons and droveways, so commoning rights and grazing shape land use here as much as private gardens. Footpaths cross former pasture and run past a manor and village hall; on clear days those routes lead to quiet stretches of heath and to stretches of mixed wood where the forest understory changes with the seasons.