New Forest with Kids

For a long time, we told ourselves we weren’t really leaving London.

Just trying something different. Just for a while.

But of course, we were.

Four years ago, our life looked very different. We both had established careers, homes of our own and jobs that involved more time travelling overseas than being still. London was busy, full and, at the time, exactly where we thought we were meant to be.

Then our little boy arrived.

Covid, with a toddler in London, shifted everything. What had once felt exciting began to feel difficult in ways we hadn’t expected, and after a brief escape to Bermuda through work, we came back knowing something had to change.

We made the decision to leave — giving up our jobs, selling our homes and stepping into a period that felt far less certain than anything we’d done before. What followed was a long stretch of in-between: rental homes, a surprise pregnancy at 44, all while living through a major renovation in the home we had found in Keyhaven.

We’re now slowly settling into life in the New Forest, but it hasn’t been as simple as just moving.

It’s taken time to rebuild the everyday — the network of small, reliable things you don’t think about until they’re gone. New nurseries, doctors and dentists, people to call when something needs fixing, places for the children to go and the routines that slowly begin to make somewhere feel like home.

Life looks quite different now.

Work is no longer something to feel stressed about and weekends are no longer something to recover from. They’re spent outside, usually on the beach or in the forest, whatever the weather — wellies, coats, snacks packed and everyone a little muddier or sandier by the time we get home.

The seasons go by almost unnoticed in London, but here they are something to marvel at.

Spring arrives quietly — just a shift in the air, a hint of green returning to the trees and then everything comes into bloom: fields full of yellow, blossom on the trees and animals reappearing.

Summer stretches everything out. Long evenings, sandy feet and days spent moving between the forest and the water.

Autumn feels like the most dramatic change. The forest turns quickly, greens giving way to deep oranges, rusts and golds, the ground thick with leaves and the light softer, lower and harder to hold onto. Every walk feels different from the last.

And then winter, when everything becomes still. Frost settles in the mornings, the trees stripped back to their shapes and the forest quieter in a way that’s hard to describe until you’ve stood in it.

The New Forest isn’t something you pass through — it’s something you share space with. Pigs during pannage season rooting through the leaves, deer slipping quietly between the trees, cattle moving slowly across the roads, donkeys gathered at the verges and of course the ponies, always present in some form or another.

Even the idea of a commute has changed completely.

There’s no longer the squeeze onto a crowded tube or the rush through busy stations. Instead, mornings begin with driving through the forest as it’s just waking up — light filtering through the trees, mist hanging low in places and the occasional animal deciding it has right of way. And rather than frustration, there’s space for patience, even appreciation in those moments.

It’s still a transition and there are days when we feel very far from the lives we used to know. But slowly, a different rhythm has taken hold here.

This space is a way of recording that — the practical side of starting again in a new place and the quieter changes that come with building a different kind of family life in the New Forest, one day at a time.