Queen Elizabeth Country Park

Or cor blimey it is cold!

It was a sunny day. From inside it looked rather lovely actually. The English weather has a way of deceiving you like that. It pretends that it is nice outside and convinces you it is nice until WHAM! you go out and it is freezing....

Peter and Jules had their eye on a walk up the highest hill in the South Downs area. Because it was a nice clear day and the views from the top were supposed to be pretty good we all jumped in the car and headed over near Petersfield.

Naturally the first stop was a country pub for lunch. Peter had purchased a pub guide the day before as there are so many pubs around the place choosing one can be a little tricky. The pub we chose however, was not in the guide, Peter and Jules had been there before in summer and enjoyed it. So the first stop was the Seven Stars pub in Stroud for a fantastic Steak and Longfoot Ale pie and a beer of course (in this case Hofbrau Premium). After that we had dessert and then headed off to Queen Elizabeth Country Park to do the walk.

At just over 230m high to say that Buster Hill was a tough climb would be exaggerating, but it was bloody cold which made the trek up and down all the more difficult. Once at the top you could see a number of little villages all around and to the south the English Channel and, if you had xray vision, France. Being windy made it perfect weather for kite flying and kite boarding which, despite the cold, a lot of people were taking advantage of. We even saw a glider fly over.

The walk back down was uneventful as was the short drive back to Southampton via Tesco. All in all it was a fun, but cold, day.




The pub lunch.



Up the hill....



Close the gate!



Vistas.



Step over the gate! Remember that Sheep Worrying is an offense.



Good one Peter.



Some weird brazier thingy.



I'm King of the world!



Worshipping??



Peter trying to be artistic.



Down the hill....