10th-17th July 2026 – Buckler’s Hard, Hampshire

It’s been over seven weeks since my last blog as, again, we have been “confined to barracks”. 

Unfortunately, on our last holiday my wife had a fall when we were out walking on a coastal path and the resulting fracture has restricted any meaningful sorties since then. With good support from her osteopath (and determination on her part) she made sufficient progress for us to embark on another trip to the south coast and make the most of the wonderful summer that we are enjoying in the UK.

We found an amazing rental cottage at Buckler’s Hard (the shipyard where boats for Nelson’s Navy were built) on the banks of the Beaulieu River, in the heart of the New Forest. This fabulous venue enabled us to do some local birdwatching and to visit some other nearby birding sites which were easy for us to access.

The cottage, a unique Grade II listed former bath house with thatched roof and rustic tree trunk veranda, was set in an idyllic location beside the Beaulieu River and was ideal for our purposes.

In the secluded extensive garden we enjoyed seeing a variety of birds and regularly heard redshank, curlew and oystercatcher on the river banks.

Some of the birds that we saw in the garden:

In the evenings we were treated to the sight of adult barn swallows feeding their young and rabbits playing on the lawn.

Our first trip out was only a dozen miles away to Calshot, a coastal village at the west corner of Southampton Water where it joins the Solent. Calshot is notable for its role in the development of aircraft and flying boats. In 1913 the Royal Flying Corps established Calshot Naval Air Station (later known as RNAS Calshot and RAF Calshot) at the end of Calshot Spit and there are still the large hangars which are put to good use as activities centres.

Our next birding trip was again only a very short ride to Lymington and Keyhaven Marshes. The internationally important coastal marshes and mudflats are teeming with fish and, as a result, thousands of sea birds and waders flock here.

Both of these sites we would love to visit again, outside the summer season when we might expect to see even more birds.

For non birding activities we visited nearby Lymington and Beaulieu (but unfortunately we did not have enough time to visit the estate with its country house and excellent National Motor Museum) and spent a lot of time absorbing the atmosphere of Buckler’s Hard by visiting its excellent museum and taking a river cruise on the Beaulieu river.

We also had several visits to the Master Builder’s House (now a pub and restaurant) which, fortuitously, was only a hundred yards from our cottage.