Two 18th-century inns face each other across the road in Brook, which is a lot of pub for a hamlet this small. The Bell Inn and the Green Dragon both survived, both Grade II listed, both still trading. You could eat somewhere different every night of a short stay and never leave the road you arrived on.
The Bell Inn has a Georgian red-brick façade looking out over a common grazed by New Forest ponies, donkeys and cattle, which wander up to the green opposite as a matter of routine. Inside there are open fireplaces, flagstone floors, a low-beamed bar and a snug. The bar has been the heart of the place since 1782, and the same family has owned it for over 200 years; the current owner is Robert Crosthwaite Eyre. The kitchen does a 10oz Hampshire steak with hand-cut chips, watercress and peppercorn sauce, sea bream, a feta, shallot and pepper galette, and a Sunday roast with crisp roasties. The bar is well stocked with real ales, artisan gins and, as one description has it, an eclectic wine list.
The Bell is also, since 1952, the clubhouse of Bramshaw Golf Club. Pub and golf clubhouse are not a common combination.
Across the road, the Green Dragon overlooks a stream spanned by a humped-backed bridge. The building dates from the 15th century and started as premises for a wheelwright and a coffin maker before becoming a beer house around 200 years ago. The pies are the thing to order, backed by an ever-changing specials board, roasts, and separate vegetarian, vegan and children's menus. The beer garden has a heated canopy for when the weather doesn't cooperate, and a play area for children.
The golf club is older than either arrangement suggests. The Forest Course is the oldest in Hampshire, laid out on New Forest heathland around 1865 by a retired Royal Navy lieutenant, Philip Augustus Champion de Crespigny — partly in his own garden and partly on Brook Common, reportedly without planning permission. He and the landowner John Jeffreys founded both the golf club and Bramshaw Cricket Club in 1880.
The lane rising uphill directly opposite the Bell Inn leads to the Rufus Stone, about a mile off near Upper Canterton. It marks the spot where King William II was killed by an arrow while hunting on 2 August 1100 — loosed by Sir Walter Tyrrell, who said it glanced off an oak. Whether it was accident or murder has never been settled, and some historians now doubt the location entirely. The current stone went up in 1841, replacing an earlier one.
A 7.2-mile circular starts and finishes at the two pubs, taking you past the Rufus Stone, Canterton Glen and on to Minstead, where Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is buried in the churchyard. Reckon on three hours, five stiles, a footbridge, and mud.
Brook sits just off the A31 near Cadnam; Ashurst New Forest station is four or five miles away, Lyndhurst about the same. Buses are the limited rural kind, which means a car.
The ponies don't know about any of this. They turn up on the green, crop the grass, and move on.