By Katie Isham. The days are growing darker by the moment, sometimes in many different ways. So it seems like the perfect time to search for the brightness. Light may be rarer as autumn shuffles along, but there are dazzling flashes to behold, if you know where to look. ...
Suburban Safari
View from the Kingsland: Does the league table ever lie?
By Nick Mabey. It’s a cliché – that the league table never lies – but is it a truth or a myth? This season, Southampton have already occupied a range of places from 1st (briefly) to 19th in the Championship so what does that tell us? After nine games...
Suburban Safari: Marlhill Mushrooms
By Katie Isham. The calendar has clicked into October and the Harvest Moon is about to wax to the max. The time is right for wandering through some local woodland to fawn over the blushing branches and squeal at magnificent formations of fungi on display. Marlhill Copse is a...
Suburban Safari: Marchwood
By Katie Isham. “Where’s the beach?” is the question often posed by visitors to Southampton. To which the answer, woefully, is that there isn’t one. But, that isn’t strictly true. The dictionary definition of a beach, is a strip of land covered with sand or stones at the edge...
Suburban Safari: Dowd’s Farm Park
By Katie Isham. Join our resident mild adventure writer on her latest exploration of Southampton and surrounding areas. When is a farm not a farm? When it’s a park instead. A charming suburban park right at the heart of Hedge End. Dowd’s Farm used to belong to Vera...
Suburban Safari: Buds in the suburbs
By Katie Isham. It’s that foolish time of year again. The recent mild weather tricked us into thinking spring has sprung, but alas, the cold is persisting. It might be sunny, but we are in the grip of Fool’s Spring! Yet, there are signs of the promise of things...
Suburban Safari: Winter Sun on the Shore
By Katie Isham. In the midst of a cold, dark winter, any bright, sunny days are heralded like the returning hero after a battle; the second coming of a messiah. Any appearance of the sun from behind the great, grey shroud we currently live under, and we must make...
Suburban Safari: A tree is for life
By Katie Isham. There’s been so much tree exposure over the past few weeks. The shiny ones, the sparkly ones, the pink ones. But it’s all unearthed a deep-rooted need to commune with some more natural trees. Do you ever get the urge to walk among the trees? Drop...
Suburban Safari: Ladies Walk, Thornhill
By Katie Isham. Let’s go back in time a little, to the late 19th century. Thornhill Park was still an estate, but a sprawling parkland one of over 400 acres. It was initially formed by Michael Hoy, later passed to his widow, Elizabeth and then after her death, to...
Suburban Safari: Minstead Meanderings
Words and pictures by Katie Isham. Someday, we’ll go on a walk that doesn’t involve consecrated ground, but that day is not today my friends. This walk meanders through a graveyard, past some of the greatest oaks known to exist and possibly the greatest country gate vista ever viewed. ...