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Solstice Boat Charter - Power
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We provide day trips in the Solent to the Isle of
Wight
The Solent is fascinating- the
beautiful varied coastline also includes one of the most
photographed sights in the UK, the wonderful Needles. A stop-over in
Cowes, the bustling sailing hub of the Solent, will give you the
chance to visit one of its many pubs or restaurants for lunch.
**SEE HERE** |
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The Lilies Cottage
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New Forest |
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The Lilies is a luxury
Cottage in a quiet and peaceful location 3 minutes
from the new forest and 2 minutes from the world famous harbour
and marina at Lymington Quay.
Click Here for details |
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Lymington
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Health & Leisure |
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New Forest Health and Leisure
centres offer the best gym facilities in the local area, with
each site boasting the following features:
Latest Technogym cardiovascular and resistance equipment
-Wellness Technology
-Air conditioning
-Cardio theatre or audio/visual entertainment
-Free weights and a designated floor work area.
Click Here for details |
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New Forest Accommodation put yourself on the map*
Holiday Cottage or b&b in the New Forest
Your Ad Here?
Click Here |
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The New Forest is an area of southern England which includes
the largest remaining tracts of unenclosed pasture land,
heath land and forest in the heavily-populated south east of
England, and has National Park status. It is the largest
remaining area of lowland heath in England and covers south
west Hampshire and some of contiguous southeast Wiltshire.
Additionally the New Forest local government district is a
subdivision of Hampshire which covers most of the forest,
and some nearby areas although it's no longer the planning
authority for the National Park. There are many small
villages dotted around the area.
The highest point in the New Forest is Piper's Wait, just
west of Bramshaw. Its summit is at 125 m (410 ft) above mean
sea level.
A 1994 study of 124 Hampshire B&B's found that perhaps the
most important precursor for success as the operator of a
bed-and-breakfast inn is having prior experience in the
lodging industry. Other important attributes of success in
operating bed-and-breakfast inns were appropriate use of
financial data, knowledge of accounting, and family support.
The B&B's were surveyed to determine the attitudes and
beliefs they perceived as necessary for success as an
operator. The attributes considered most important were
correlated with actual descriptions of a group of
(self-described) successful operators. The study points up
the need for would-be B&B operators to be realistic about
the attributes of a successful operator, as well as being
able to act on that knowledge. For operators entering the
business without hospitality or business experience, the
road may be rocky unless they quickly get education and
other assistance.
The New Forest is a former royal hunting area in the south
of England. It was created in 1079 by William I (known as
William the Conqueror) as a hunting area, principally of
deer.
It is a unique area of historical, ecological and
agricultural significance, and retains many of the rural
practices conceded by the Crown in historical times to local
people. Principal of these is the pasturing of ponies,
cattle, pigs and donkeys in the open Forest by local
inhabitants known as commoners. The New Forest has also been
an important source of timber for the Crown.
It is an outstanding recreational area for walking and
riding. It has recently been designated a National Park.
The B&B segment is growing and as it grows its
characteristics increasingly match those of the lodging
industry as a whole. Fewer B&Bs are being opened as
second-income businesses, while more are being developed as
properties that provide primary income to professional
owner-operators. A substantial change over the past
operation of B&Bs is the addition of restaurants or other
food service in day parts other than breakfast and to
customers other than overnight guests. The greatest threat
to B&Bs is zoning and other local regulations that tend to
restrict B&B operations.
Like much of England, the New Forest was originally
woodland, but parts were cleared for cultivation from the
Stone Age and into the Bronze Age. However, the poor quality
of the soil in the new forest meant that the cleared areas
turned into heathland "waste". There are around 250 round
barrows[1] within its boundaries, and scattered boiling
mounds, and it also includes about 150 scheduled ancient
monuments.
The New Forest was created as a royal forest around 1080 by
William the Conqueror for the hunting of (mainly) deer. It
was first recorded as "Nova
Foresta" in the Doomsday Book in 1086. The story that
the inhabitants of thirty-six parishes were evicted is one
of the many myths surrounding the forest's history. Two of
William's sons died in the forest, Prince Richard in 1081
and William Rufus in 1100. The reputed spot of the Rufus'
death is marked with a stone known as the Rufus Stone.
As of 2005, roughly ninety per cent of the New Forest is
still owned by the Crown. The Crown lands have been managed
by the Forestry Commission since 1923. Around half of the
Crown lands fall inside the new National Park.
Formal commons rights were confirmed by statute in 1698.
Over time, the New Forest became a source of timber for the
Royal Navy, and plantations were deliberately created in the
18th century for this specific purpose. In the Great Storm
of 1703, about four thousand oak trees were lost in the New
Forest.
The naval plantations encroached on the rights of the
Commoners, but the Forest gained new protection under an Act
of Parliament in 1877. The New Forest Act 1877 confirmed the
historic rights of the Commoners and prohibited the
enclosure of more than 16,000 acres (65 kmē) at any time. It
also reconstituted the Court of Verderers as representatives
of the Commoners (rather than the Crown).
Felling of broadleaf trees, and replacement by conifers,
began during the First World War to meet the wartime demand
for wood. Further encroachments were made in the Second
World War. This process is today being reversed in places,
with some plantations being returned to heathland or
broadleaf woodland.
WW2 remains at IbsleyFurther New Forest Acts followed in
1949, 1964 and 1970. The New Forest became a Site of Special
Scientific Interest in 1971, and was granted special status
as the "New Forest Heritage Area" in 1985, with additional
planning controls added in 1992. The New Forest was proposed
as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in June 1999, and it became
a National Park in 2005.
Edward Rutherfurd's work of historical fiction, The Forest,
is based in the New Forest in the time period from 1099
through 2000.
A miniature pony in the Forest. Forest Laws were enacted to
preserve the New Forest as a location for royal deer
hunting, and interference with the King's deer and its
forage was punished. However the inhabitants of the
area("Commoners") had pre-existing "rights of common": to
turn horses and cattle (but only rarely sheep) out into the
Forest to graze ("common pasture"), to gather wood ("estovers"),
to cut peat for fuel ("turbary"), to dig clay ("marl"), and
to turn out pigs between September and November to eat
fallen acorns and beechnuts ("pannage" or "mast"). There
were also licences granted to gather bracken after 29
September as litter for animals ("fern"), Along with
grazing, pannage is still an important part of the forest
ecology. Pigs can eat acorns without a problem, whereas to
ponies and cattle large numbers of acorns can be poisonous.
Pannage always lasts 60 days but the start date varies
according to the weather and when the acorns fall. The
Verderers decide when pannage will start each year. At other
times the pigs must be taken in and kept on the owner's land
with the exception that pregnant sows, known as "privileged
sows", are always allowed out providing they are not a
nuisance and return to the Commoner's holding at night (they
must be "levant" and "couchant" there). This last is not a
true Right, however, so much as an established practice. The
principle of levancy and couchancy applied generally to the
right of pasture as it was unstinted but commoners must have
backup land, outside the Forest, to accommodate these
depastured animals as during the Foot and Mouth epidemic.
Cattle eating winter feed, Longdown Inclosure. Commons
rights are attached to particular plots of land (or in the
case of turbary, to particular heaths), and different land
has different rights and some of this land is some
distance from the Forest itself. Rights to graze ponies and
cattle are not for a certain number of animals, as is often
the case on other commons. Instead a "marking fee" is paid
for each animal each year by the owner. The marked animal's
tail is trimmed by the local "agister" (Verderers'
official), with each of the four or five Forest agisters
using a different trimming pattern. Ponies are branded with
the owner's brand-mark; cattle may be branded, or nowadays
may have the brand-mark on an ear-tag. The grazing done by
the commoners' ponies and cattle is an essential part of the
management of the Forest, helping to maintain the
internationally important heathland, bog, grassland and
wood-pasture habitats and their associated wildlife.
Alder trees by the Beaulieu river near Fawley fordThe New
Forest Heritage Area covers about 580 kmē (143321 acres),
and the New Forest SSSI covers almost 300 kmē (74131 acres),
making it the largest contiguous area of un-sown vegetation
in lowland Britain. It includes roughly:
146 kmē (36077 acres) of broadleaf woodland
118 kmē (29158 acres) of heathland and grassland
33 kmē (8154 acres) of wet heathland
84 kmē (20756 acres) of tree plantations ("inclosures")
established since the 18th century, including 80 kmē (19768
acres) planted by the Forestry Commission since the 1920s.
It is drained to the south by two rivers, the Lymington and
Beaulieu.
Picnic area in the New Forest. As well as providing a
visually remarkable and historic landscape, the ecological
value of the New Forest is particularly great because of the
relatively large areas of lowland habitats, lost elsewhere,
which have survived. The area contains several kinds of
important lowland habitat including valley bogs, wet heaths,
dry heaths and deciduous woodland. The area contains a
profusion of rare wildlife, including the New Forest cicada
Cicadetta montana, the only cicada native to Great Britain.
The wet heaths are important for rare plants, such as marsh
gentian Gentiana pneumonanthe and marsh clubmoss
Lycopodiella inundata. Several species of sundew may be
found in the Forest, and the area is also the habitat of
many unusual insect species, including the Southern
damselfly Coenagrion mercuriale, and the mole cricket
Gryllotalpa gryllotalpa (both rare in Britain).
Three species of snake inhabit the Forest. The adder is the
most common being found on open heath and grassland. The
grass snake prefers the damper environment of the valley
mires. The rare smooth snake can be found on sandy hillsides
with heather and gorse.
A program to reintroduce the sand lizard started in 1989 and
the great crested newt already breeds in many locations.
Numerous deer live in the Forest but are usually rather shy
and tend to stay out of sight when people are around, but
are surprisingly bold at night, even when a car drives past.
Fallow deer are the most common followed by roe deer and red
deer. There are also smaller populations of sika deer and
muntjac. The semi-wild ponies mentioned earlier are possibly
the New Forest's most famous common animals, however.
The New Forest is designated as a Site of Special Scientific
Interest (SSSI), EU Special Area of Conservation (SAC), a
Special Protection Area for birds (SPA) and a Ramsar Site,
it also has its own Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP)
Ponies walking the streets in Burley.Among the towns and
villages lying in or adjacent to the Forest are Lyndhurst
(which claims to be the 'capital' of the New Forest),
Abbotswell, Hythe, Totton, Blissford, Burley, Brockenhurst,
Fordingbridge, Frogham, Stuckton, Ringwood, Beaulieu,
Bransgore Lymington and New Milton. It is bounded to the
west by Bournemouth and to the east by the city of
Southampton. The forest gives its name to the New Forest
district of Hampshire.
Consultations on the possible designation of a National Park
in the New Forest were commenced by the Countryside Agency
in 1999. An order to create the park was made by the Agency
on 24 January 2002 and submitted to the Secretary of State
for confirmation in February 2002. Following objections from
seven local authorities and others, a Public Inquiry was
held from 8 October 2002 to 10 April 2003, concluding with
that the proposal should be endorsed with some detailed
changes to the boundary of the area to be designated.
On 28 June 2004, Rural Affairs Minister Alun Michael
confirmed the government's intention to designate the area
as a National Park, with further detailed boundary
adjustments. The area was formally designated as such on 1
March 2005. A National Park Authority for the New Forest was
established on 1 April 2005 and assumed its full statutory
powers on 1 April 2006. The Forestry Commission retain their
powers to manage the Crown land within the Park, and the
Verderers under the New Forest Acts also retain their
responsibilities, and the Park Authority is expected to
co-operate with these bodies, the local authorities, English
Nature and other interested parties.
National Park area in green; pink area shows the county of
Hampshire.The designated area of the National Park covers
571 kmē (141097 acres) and includes many existing SSSIs. It
has a population of approximately 38,000 (excluding most of
the 170,256 people who live in the New Forest local
government district). As well as most of the New Forest
district of Hampshire, it takes in the South Hampshire Coast
Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, a small corner of Test
Valley district around the village of Canada and part of the
Salisbury district in Wiltshire south-east of Redlynch.
However, the area covered by the park does not include all
the areas which were initially proposed; excluding most of
the valley of the River Avon to the west of the forest and
Dibden Bay to the east. Two challenges were made to the
designation order, by Meyrick Estate Management Ltd in
relation to the inclusion of Hinton Admiral Park, and by RWE
NPower Plc to the inclusion of Fawley Power Station. The
second challenge was settled out of court, with the power
station being excluded. The High Court upheld the first
challenge; but an appeal against the decision was then heard
by the Court of Appeal in Autumn 2006. The final ruling,
published on 15 February 2007, found in favour of the
challenge by Meyrick Estate Management Ltd, and the land at
Hinton Admiral Park is therefore excluded from the New
Forest National Park.
While the hedonic price model has been used to evaluate
willingness to pay in a variety of markets, its use in the
tourism industry is limited. This research note highlights
the usefulness of the hedonic price technique in this
industry by evaluating willingness to pay for specific
characteristics of bed and breakfast accommodations.
Heterogeneity in price and amenities offered by bed and
breakfast accommodations enables us to generate estimates of
willingness to pay for specific characteristics. Using data
on price and amenities collected from bed and breakfast
accommodations in The New Forest, the findings show a
willingness to pay for specific characteristics such as a
hot tub, a private bath, and a larger room. However,
fireplaces, themes, scenic views, and room service were not
statistically significant determinants of price. Location
characteristics, day of week, and time of year are also
found to be important. |
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To Advertise on this site please go to our main site
HERE.
You will get a listing on the main site and on this one for
one price |
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