Linwood

Beer from the Forest

The Red Shoot Inn brews its own beer, three of them: New Forest Gold, a dark mild called Muddy Boot, and Tom's Tipple. It was a farmhouse until the 1960s, when someone converted it into an inn, and it still carries hints of the old microbrewery. The Wadworth range fills out the taps. Food comes with a good run of vegetarian and gluten-free options, and the kitchen serves all day on Saturdays, Sundays, school holidays and through the summer.

The crowd is what you'd expect deep in the Forest — hikers, cyclists, dog walkers, horse riders, families from the campsite next door, and people who drove out here for no particular reason. Four-legged friends are welcome throughout. Muddy boots too. There's bench seating outside, a heated canopy for eating al fresco, and a real fire indoors for when the weather stops cooperating.

Two Inns, No Village Shop

That campsite next door is the Red Shoot Camping Park, and the pub is one of only two commercial premises in Linwood. There is no shop, no church, no bus worth the name. You reach the place by narrow lanes off the A31 near Ringwood, about four miles away, and once you're here you get around on foot, on a bike, or not at all.

The other pub is the High Corner Inn, at the bottom of a gravel track further into the trees. It started as a pig farm in the 1700s and has been extended so many times that the rooms sit on different levels. Butcombe run it now, with their award-winning beers, and the kitchen opens at eight in the morning. There are seven ensuite rooms, five things called Hideout Cabins, stabling for horses, and a large tree-shaded beer garden with a children's play area. A six-kilometre loop links the two inns, so you can start at one, walk to the other, and walk back — best attempted in the warmer months.

Walking from High Corner

The walking is the point. From the High Corner Inn a circular climbs over open heath grazed by free-roaming ponies, then loops through the inclosures, crossing the Dockens Water at a small footbridge called Splash Bridge. If you go quietly through Hasley Inclosure you'll likely see deer, and woodpeckers and nuthatches if you look up. Firm gravel and sandy tracks, a few boggy patches, boots advised.

The Silent Watcher

Linwood's most patient resident was Eric Ashby, the wildlife cameraman known as the Silent Watcher, who lived here from 1953 until his death in 2003 at a secluded house called Badger Cottage. He was the first person to film badgers at their sett in daylight, and built soundproof camera boxes so the deer wouldn't startle. He and his wife Eileen nursed around thirty injured foxes over the years, including a cub named Tiger, and wrote a book about it. The National Park Authority described him as "an extraordinarily patient man, visiting a site on 90 occasions to record just one minute of film about a badger."

Linwood's Rare Forest-Law Privilege

Linwood's thirteenth-century tenants held a rare privilege under Forest law: their dogs were spared the toe-clipping demanded elsewhere to stop them chasing the king's deer. Eight centuries on, the Red Shoot still welcomes dogs throughout. Some things hold.