The New Forest, wild horses in the road, and seeing my first bull

Yesterday I went with my friend Jane and some others to The New Forest.  Jane is a super fun, adventurous Kiwi (New Zealander if you don't know this slang) who has a worse case of FOMO (fear of missing out) than I do, haha, and always is up to something fun. She'd suggested we go to New Forest - an area of the British countryside about 1.5 hour train ride outside of London that's supposed to be beautiful and have great bike paths. Honestly, these are the things I craved when I lived in Chicago and needed a nature fix. It's so nice to have started to make some friends that are up for adventure and outdoorsy stuff!

It was a pretty straightforward trip: take the train from Waterloo

rent bikes next to the train station, head to the forest!

Some things I didn't know? Apparently New Forest is known for their wild ponies? We encountered this immediately when we got into town to pick up some water, and 4 horses were literally causing a traffic jam as they walked down the street, circled (and kicked) several cars, and walked up onto the sidewalk next to us!

These guys were seriously just strolling down the road through the middle of town.

Starting to head our way a bit...

Making buddies with Mitch, who was holding onto our bikes while we ran into Tesco!

Ha! NOT something I expected to see. So we decide to head into the "forest". Gotta say, we should've spent more time looking into a good map. We had no idea just how HUGE the forest was (it was like a huge nature preserve with loads of different paths and roads winding around for miles and miles). 

We thought we could sort of just.....go! Not so much. And the funnier part for me, is that there were basically too many cooks in the kitchen. Everyone sort of had an opinion about where we should go and how we should get there. While I typically admit I like to be in control, this time I was happy to just sit back, ride around wherever I was pointed (which was frequently seeming to be in circles), and realize that we were literally in the middle of the forest! 

Jane and Mitch waiting for the rest of the group to catch up.

Throughout the entire day, we saw TONS of wild horses (or ponies...not sure which they were).

It was funny that they would be in the middle of the road. Right next to the road. Circling the road. In a heard all together. They pretty much did whatever they liked. And I've never seen horses stand like this, but frequently we saw two of them standing side-by-side facing each other almost like they were cuddling!

Also saw a live bull. Haven't actually seen one of those face-to-face before.

Other than that, we just explored. Got lost. Stopped 3498439 to look at a map and turn around. We went up some crazy steep hills, so got a good leg workout. Did some putsing around on our bikes...

Jane and I doing a totally natural pose...

Group shot

Stopped for lunch in one of the towns for an awesome roast and some beers. (The horse decided to camp out by our bikes as well.)

And then headed back to the town after an exhausting 5 hours of riding. So cool to me that there are places like this that are easily accessible from a city the size of London!!!