Special Offers in the New Forest

Cottage Lodge is delighted to announce a 10% discount for three nights or more, mid-week from 7th September to 23rd October 2015. Sunday to Thursday nights in the late summer early autumn are a great time to see the New Forest. Have a quick look on our bookings page to see if there are any dates  that suit you to visit. You will need to ring us to redeem this special offer.

In September and October the weather is generally warm, ponies are just putting on their autumn coats, the bracken is beginning to don their autumnal colours ready for the magnificant show ahead. Once the acorns start dropping the pigs go out on the forest. Acorns are poisonous to ponies. But, the 5000 mares on the forest and their foals don’t know this. So they munch on them whenever they can. Pigs are the perfect answer. Pigs love acorns and snaffle them up before the ponies can’t get to them. 500 pigs with their piglets are turned out across the forest on a merry session of gorging on acorns and scaring visitors. Mostly harmless, the pigs will only look up from their snuffling to take an interest in you if you get between them and their piglets. If you give them a wide birth they will ignore you. Get between a pig and its piglet and you could have a chase on your hands.

There is a lovely story of a guest staying in an Ashurst B&B who came home dishevelled and dirty after a day out in the forest. ‘What happened?’ asked the owner of the B&B. ‘Got too close to some piglets. The mother chased me up a tree and trapped me up the tree for a couple of hours!’ came the happy reply. Lots of photographs, a great story to tell when he got home, and a merry hour in a tree watching the pigs close up.

keyboard_arrow_left Back