Meon Valley Trail - Izzy's first outing


For our first walking trip with Izzy we decided that the mountains were probably a step too far so looking for something slightly closer to home we settled on a section of the Meon Valley trail, from West Wood through to Soberton.

Unsure as exactly how Izzy would cope with being out for 3-4 hours or how Donna would get on with walking 9-10km the Meon Valley trail was an ideal choice as we could turn around at any point in time and head back to the car park at West Wood - just outside of Wickham.



The Meon Valley Trail is a total of 11 miles and follows the path of the old Alton to Fareham railway so is flat and well surfaced for the length of the path.  The main, 9 mile, section runs from Wickham through to West Meon and while there are a number of car parks available Wickham is always busy and the easiest place to park is in one of the car parks in West Wood (note - you do have to pay in these car parks and the charge is around £2 for the day).
Bluebells still covering the forest
The paths through West Wood are well surfaced and ideal for the buggy
We headed out from the car park at West Wood and after a few hundred meters joined the main Meon Valley trail and from here followed the path (muddy in sections) through to Soberton where we left the trail and walked into the village to stop for lunch at the White Lion pub.

Monty with one of the many sticks he picked up!




 The steps that we'd taken from the trail up to Soberton were fairly steep and muddy so on the return step we decided to take another route which led us down to the path by the river and from here followed the trail back to West Wood - stopping briefly en route to put Izzy in the Moby wrap in an effort to calm her down again!

Link to Meon Valley Trail pdf from Hampshire Gov website - here

 The route map from the walk, recorded on my Nexus 5 via ViewRanger is below;

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