Balmer Lawn, New Forest | Socially Distanced Adventures with Kids
At the end of June we celebrated Dexter’s 2nd birthday, and to be honest, it wasn’t really the birthday we had planned. Fortunately, the weather was on our side (the same could not be said for Henry’s birthday two weeks prior where it rained all day) so we decided to head out to the New Forest for a socially distanced adventure.
Despite living in Hampshire for over 10 years, the New Forest isn’t somewhere we’ve explored particularly well, and which I plan to rectify this year. It’s about 20 minutes away from our home and offers a huge range of places to visit including woodlands, water and the sea as well as little villages throughout.
As we’re still practicing social distancing we’ll be sticking to the woodland areas and beaches the New Forest has to offer, and avoiding the villages as they can get busy at the best of times, even if they are so perfectly quaint I’m going to be gutted to miss the cafes.
After some recommendations from my Instagram followers, we decided to head to Balmer Lawn which sits between Brokenhurst and Lyndhurst. It offers big open spaces and the Lymington River to paddle in. It is a very popular location, so I’d recommend arriving early (we got there around 9am) and parked at the second car park – Tilery Road Car Park which had plenty of space and was a small walk back up to the main river bank.
The Balmer Lawn is perfect for a little picnic, bike riding and field games and has plenty of open space for little ones to run free without you having to worry.
Sunny days, it does get busy, particularly at the weekend. We left just after lunch and the car parks were full, and the roads through the local towns heading towards us a lot busier.
Can’t wait for our next socially distanced adventures with kids to the New Forest. Recommendations always welcome!
You can read more of our socially distanced adventures below: