Our holiday home

Thursday 4th July - We've been staying in a converted yachtsman's shelter at Baileys Hard in Hampshire. The land slopes down to the Beaulieu River (you can see it in the background) and our holiday home is one of eight built in woodland.

Our holiday home at Bailey's Hard

Baileys Hard is within easy walking distance of Beaulieu (up river) and Bucklers Hard (down river, not far from where the river meets the sea.

Inside, the house is lovely. It's small, with just one double bedroom. There's a loo, a bathroom with an excellent shower, a well-equipped kitchen, and a moderate sized lounge with a TV.

Boadband and Wi-Fi is included although it was poor throughput and the Wi-Fi seemed patchy. I think it's a difficult area of the coast for networks and poorly served by broadband.

We put out some bird seed and suet the first day we were here and have been rewarded with a lot of activity and a chance to see some birds that are, for us, rather special. A jay and two greater spotted woodpeckers have visited us daily, and there's been an assortment of finches and tits as well as a blackbird and a nuthatch.

It was fun to live upstairs in a stilt house, it felt rather like a very well-appointed tree house.

(If you liked this you might also like Journeys of heart and mind and Quote me on this.)