It’s a shame the last word my husband utters during our stay at Cottage Lodge Hotel in Brockenhurst is an expletive – as we head out of the hotel’s cheery yellow front door to go home, he cracks his head on the rather low lintel – because until now our exclamations have generally been oohs and aahs of delight.
Dynamic owner Christina Simons is busy turning what had been a chintzy six-room B&B into a small environment-friendly hotel, adding nine rooms and features such as triple insulation, flooring of bamboo and jute, solar panels, low-flow loos and LED lighting. She has chucked out the chintz and imbued the place with a slightly eccentric and definitely arboreal character. “Well we are in the middle of a forest,” she says.
The wooden furniture is the most striking feature in our room – called Standing Hat after a wooded hill near the village. It was all made by tree surgeon and talented carpenter Rob Dyer from a huge beech that needed felling in the grounds of the nearby college. The pleasing natural lines of the two tables, wardrobe and modern four-poster all reflect the living wood: “bedside cabinets” are a pair of metre-high blocks of solid wood; the Rhinefield room has a driftwoody four-poster from a fallen ash; and the Exbury suite’s bedroom is almost filled with a Tolkein-esque bed of soaring branches from a 200-year-old oak.
To keep things green, we’ve left the car behind. This is no hardship if you live in the south-east: Brockenhurst is less than two hours by train from Waterloo, and Cottage Lodge is a five-minute walk from the station. Guests are welcomed in the Snug, which has an honesty bar, fresh milk in the fridge with little jugs for taking to your room, maps, guides and complimentary cake.
This is the oldest part of the building, a forester’s cottage built in 1650 using the frame of a decommissioned merchant ship. The beam above our heads, Christina tells us, was the main timber supporting the deck, and the tree it came from would have been a sapling in about 1100, not long after William the Conk declared the forest a royal hunting ground. In the evening the breakfast room across the hallway morphs into the Fallen Tree (you’ve got the theme by now), a fine-dining restaurant run as a separate business by local chef Phil Holmes with a Slovakian couple, Radovan and Diana. It’s busy even on a Monday night, and we sit at one of seven lovely tables all made from (no prizes) a single tree – in this case a black poplar – for a well-prepared dinner with cheffy touches, such as a puff of smoke when I unscrew the lid on my jarred wild mushroom medley. I can never resist slow-cooked belly pork, and it’s as crisp and unctuous as any I’ve had. Our shared dessert of cherry mousse with “apricot soup” offers a great flavour hit.
Next day we go exploring not on foot, not by bike, but in a Twizy, the slightly mad-looking electric vehicle the New Forest has taken to its heart, with free charging points all over the national park. Sitting one behind the other, we buzz (at 30mph, though it feels like 50) down to Beaulieu, with its palace and abbey, and pretty Bucklers Hard.
We’re delighted when the weather turns wet and cold, because our hotel room also boasts a wood-burning stove, with piles of logs and kindling, and it would be a shame not to snuggle up in front of it. Back in Standing Hat we Google “how to light a woodburning stove”, then take it in turns to chuck in chunks of wood. After all, we are in the middle of a forest.
• Accommodation was provided by Cottage Lodge Hotel (01590 622296, cottagelodge.co.uk), which has doubles from £99 B&B. Three-course dinner at the Fallen Tree costs £26.95, drinks extra. Train travel was provided by South West Trains (southwesttrains.co.uk), which has returns from Waterloo to Brockenhurst from £20. Twizy hire was provided by hireatwizy.co.uk, from Liz Boulter
£29 a half-day
Ask a local
Ross Kempson, owner, Cyclexperience, Brockenhurst
• A good bike ride for an active family would be to Beaulieu from Brockenhurst: it’s off-road for all but the first half-mile, and there are ice-creams at Hatchet Pond, and sometimes model planes to watch on Beaulieu Heath.
• There’s live music from good bands four nights a week at the Thomas Tripp pub in Lymington.
• The food at the Red Lion in Boldre is exceptional. There are plenty of pubs doing nice food around here, but the Red Lion is something else.
Harry Oram, former chief forester, New Forest
• The best walking around Brockenhurst is north of the village, off Rhinefield Road. The national park site has downloadable walking routes – from two miles to full days.
• The New Forest Reptile Centre is also up that way. In spring and summer they have a webcam on a goshawk nest – it’s wonderful.
• If you want real ales and homemade pub grub, try the Turfcutters Arms at Hatchet Pond, owned by New Zealander Jed. It’s dog-friendly and old-fashioned.
• For something a bit smarter, the White Buck in Burley has fancier food, with specials of local venison and fis.
