Lyndhurst, Dorset: Home of Alice in Wonderland

This past weekend, in the midst of essays and presentations and colds and moving house and just generally going a bit mad, I visited a quaint village: Lyndhurst. Lyndhurst is a tiny village in the county of Dorset, and happens to be in the middle of New Forest, an English national park full of wild ponies. Some may say it’s a wonderland (sorry). It also happens to have been the home of the woman who inspired Alice in Wonderland.

“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.
“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”
“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.
“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

 The little village is full of references to Alice – including the Mad Hatter tea room which we peered inside of at all the Alice in Wonderland paraphernalia.

The village itself is quaint and full of tudor and brick houses, and a high street lined with tea rooms, clock towers, and wandering British tourists.

 “It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

One special place is the grave yard, up on the hill behind the church at the top of the high street.

“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Tucked away behind the church is the grave of Alice Hargreaves (maiden name Liddell) – the lady who, as a child rowing in Oxford with Lewis Carroll, inspired him to pen the classic story Alice in Wonderland.

“Who in the world am I? Ah, that’s the great puzzle.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Following the high street down in the other direction leads directly into New Forest, which feels a bit like Wonderland, as it’s full of wild ponies and donkeys. We saw a fair few ponies nudging people, stealing food, climbing on blankets, interrupting cricket games, etc… there are so many that people almost treat them like “pests”! Giant, lovely, hilarious pests who want to steal your sandwich…

Back on the high street there are tons of tea rooms to choose for lunch. We went with the unusual Tea Total tearoom, a  more eastern inspired tea room (that hosts gluten free scones as well as a huge range of imported teas, especially matcha tea!).

  ^^ gluten free scone!

^^ Matcha lemonade…matcha has 3x the antioxidants as normal green tea!

“Alice:How long is forever? White Rabbit: Sometimes, just one second.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

It was a wonder-ful day out 😉

Sarah xx

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