The cold warning ended up being very justified and not quite emphasised enough, as it was absolutely freezing when we woke up in the morning! Our arms were steaming with the temperature difference as we got out of bed and immediately tried to get the log burner going again. We quickly gave up though in favour of boiling the kettle and cooking some breakfast over the gas burner. After a delicious breakfast of bacon, eggs and sausage in home-made local bread, we got ready to hop in the car and head down to the New Forest.

It was about a 40-minute drive to the New Forest Wildlife Park, where we were a little apprehensive to see how many families with children there were already driving up. They had a great one-way system set up though, and we made our way through the park watching giant otters ‘chatting’ to the people passing by, polecats and ferrets playing, tiny harvest mice exploring an incredible playground set up and deer roaming around! After we’d done a loop of the whole park and felt confident we’d seen everything, we headed back to the car and drove towards a plantation where I’d read you could find beautiful bluebells. We ended up not being able to find the entrance, but we did drive through an incredible landscape of open hills with wild ponies wandering around and cows holding up traffic by walking on the road. After driving up and back, we drive around Lyndhurst and found our way to the Millyford Bridge Inclosure, where we were able to park the car and go for a walk through the forest. It was a beautiful walk, peaceful aside from a few other walkers and cyclists, and after wandering for a while we found a spot to sit and eat our leftover burgers for lunch.

Once we’d eaten and walked around for a little longer, we headed back to the car and up the road to the deer sanctuary. Unfortunately, we spotted a line of parked cars and people flowing out of the carpark and both opted to skip that particular spot. Instead, we managed to find a lookout spot with a beautiful view over the surrounding landscape. Once we’d stopped for a look and a photo, we hopped back in the car and looped around through fields with horses to the highway and headed back to Broughton. We got back a little earlier than expected but this meant we had time to sit in the sun and read for a while – I reserved the hammock by the stream and thoroughly enjoyed it. We had also spotted a few wasps again, so we messaged Kate and Pete and they gave us some citronella candles and a can of Raid that I used to exterminate a few wasps who’d been trying to make their home in the eaves of the wagon.

At 4 we walked through the village to the ‘Tally Ho!’ pub, where we sat up at a table in the beer garden and had a glass of wine in the sun. It was very strange to be ‘in’ a pub, but it was a nice quiet point in the afternoon, so we had no worries at all about too many people. When we started getting a bit peckish, we headed back to the The Meadow and got dinner cooking over the fire – while also setting up the log burner to warm up the wagon in the meanwhile! We used the outdoor dining table that they had available and set up a fancy dinner of steaks and grilled vegetables with some lettuce. The buffalo steak was just as delicious as the burgers had been, and in comparison to the sirloin we’d also ordered, it was much richer – and bigger! It was a fantastic dinner, smokey from the fire and full of flavour, and we were thoroughly stuffed by the time we’d finished. We sat up in front of the fire to watch RuPaul’s Drag Race on Peter’s iPad and made some imitation s’mores with marshmallows and leftover Easter chocolate.

After a much more restful sleep (knowing the wasps were gone), we had a slow start on Sunday morning. We had breakfast and walked down to the community store to source a coffee before packing up and getting in the car at around 10:30. Peter wanted to stop over in Southampton to get a stamp in his BrewDog passport so we drove down there and parked nearby. As it opened at 12, I went and ordered some pies for lunch at Piecaramba while Peter got us a spot at BrewDog. I was a bit conscious of the timeframe, as Google was telling us that it would take two hours to drive back to London and we needed to drop the car off by Enterprise’s closing time at 3, so we quickly ate our pies before jumping back in the car at 12:25.

We had a super smooth drive most of the way, and we were due to get back at about 2:45, which would have been perfect. It was just past Dartford once we were thoroughly committed to our route when we got a notification from Google saying the Blackwall Tunnel (the only tunnel under the river in East London) was closed and it had to redirect us – which would take around 45 minutes. We had a bit of a panic but just called ahead to Enterprise, who said it was fine. After being stuck in traffic throughout Greenwich, the tunnel reopened and luckily we were able to redirect back to get through. We ended up making it back to Enterprise at 3:10pm and dropped off the car with a sigh of relief before heading home to get ready for the week ahead!