Acres Down to Lucas Castle

Date: 23 November 2008

Distance: 51/2 miles

Parking: New Forest Car Park Acres Down

Map: Explorer OL22

Map ref for car park: SU268098

Leave the car park and turn left on to the gravel cycle track. Where the track bends round to the right owards a gateless gateway continue straight ahead through boundary posts. There are two grass forest tracks heading into the trees, keep to the right hand path, which is the one marked on the map.

Go down into the trees and over a wooden footbridge. Where the path divides after the bridge keep right, heading west. Pass into Holmhill Inclosure and at a T-junction turn left, heading south. Go through a wide wooden gate and follow the track uphill and down the other side to another cycle track. Turn right to be heading in a westerly direction.

At a fork take the right hand track down to another gate. Pass through the pedestrian gate and bear round to the left to cross the bridge over Highland Water. Keep following the cycle track round until the exit gate to the Canadian Memorial and road is seen at the top of the rise. Just before the gate turn off along a grass track between trees and gorse. The track passes beside a small lake and shortly after this comes to a small gate out on to moorland.

Through the gate take the second grass path right from the gate. This path goes downhill with lovely views of open moorland and forest on all sides. Where the path passes through a narrow strip of copse there is a bridgeless stream which has to be jumped or forded.

Past the stream the path climbs up to Lucas Castle and then climbs again to two lakes. From here, the plan was to find the path across Withybed Bottom to Stonnard Wood but as it was beginning to get dark and the path proving harder to find than I had thought I continued along to the car park.

Pass through the car park, or follow one of the paths around it to the main drive into the car park from the road. Arriving at the road, turn right and walk along the road, or verge, for approximately 1 mile until a four way sign post marking Stony Cross, Minstead, Acres Down and Emery Down is reached. Turn right along the driveway signed Acres Down, past Piglets Corner and other buildings, across a ford and uphill past Acres Down House. Bear right with the drive and then left past the hand-painted sign for Acres Down Car Park nailed to a tree, and arrive back at the car park in the shadow of the slope of Acres Down.

Within Highland Water Inclosure I took a couple of shortcuts along paths marked on the map as white, undashed lines. For the sake of clarity I have not included these shortcuts but with basic map-reading skills such shortcuts are easy enough to follow. Be aware though that these paths are grass and can be very dirty in winter and after heavy rain.

If the light had not been failing and I had gone across Withybed Bottom, the route would have turned left alongside Stonnard Wood and passed around the trees of Ringwood Ford Bottom, eventually turning right to pass over Ringwood Ford and then left to come back to Acres Down from the north west.

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