Nomansland

Cricket, Common and County Line

The cricket pitch at Nomansland used to cross two public roads, which meant a well-struck six could take out the roof tiles of a nearby cottage. This carried on until 1973, when the pitch was repositioned so the roads became the boundary instead. The club has played on the green since 1926, and the green itself is the whole point of the village — a large open common grazed by ponies and donkeys, with a single street arranged around it.

The county line runs straight through it. The road divides Wiltshire from Hampshire, with the green on the Hampshire side, so you can stand on the boundary while the ponies wander across it without a care.

Two Places to Eat

You come here for two very different places to eat. The Lamb Inn, on Forest Road, is a New Forest country pub built in the 1880s and now 142 years old. Sarah and Lee ran it for 27 years before Debbie and Duane Lewis of Country Inns took over; the new owners kept the swirly carpet, the wooden bar, and the collections of Toby jugs, tankards and mirrors. The kitchen does home-cooked pies with a rotating Pies of the Week menu, a steak and ale pie with crispy pastry, and slow-cooked lamb shoulder. The "Big Daddy" roast puts three roast meats, crispy potatoes, vegetables, Yorkshire pudding and gravy on one plate. There are six hand-pumped beers, real cider, and a doggy station where dogs wait for treats. Dogs go everywhere except the restaurant.

Across the green is Les Mirabelles, a French country bistro that Claude Laage, originally from Alsace, founded more than thirty years ago in a run of former village cottages. The set lunch is £24.50 for two courses, £27.50 for three, and there's a bistro menu called "Le Frog." The pavement tables look out over the cricket pitch, and the wild ponies and donkeys wander past while you eat. Reviewers rate the value, the cleanliness and the cheese knowledge; some note the patron can seem reserved with people he hasn't met.

Chapel, High Point and Golden Road

There's no shop and no Anglican church of its own. A Methodist chapel, built in 1901 on the green, stands where a mid-19th-century Primitive Methodist chapel stood before it.

Walk west out of the village on Forest Road and the ground climbs to Pipers Wait, at 129 metres the highest point in the New Forest — which in this landscape of heath, gorse and grazed lawn still only amounts to about 423 feet. South runs the "Golden Road," a honey-coloured gravel track laid when a stream was dammed to serve the Schulze gunpowder factory at Eyeworth, closed in the 1920s though Eyeworth Pond remains.

How No Man's Land Got Its Name

The name is the best thing about the place. In October 1802 John Shergold built a cottage the Crown said sat on Forest land. The court found in his favour but ruled the plot belonged to neither the Crown nor the Bishop of Winchester — no man's land — and by some accounts set off a same-day land rush as others staked their own claims.

Getting Here

Salisbury is about ten miles north-west for the train; the bus, service 763, comes through roughly every four hours, so bring a car. Then again, most people are here for the green, and the ponies don't keep a timetable.