New Forest, GB

Angela Hartnett and Luke Holder's all-day Italian dining room at the Lime Wood country house hotel, looking out over the lawns toward the open forest. Sharing antipasti, hand-rolled pasta and wood-fired secondi land on long tables in a room dressed like a posh farmhouse kitchen.

The original Pig hotel and restaurant set in a Georgian forest lodge between Brockenhurst and Beaulieu, with a 25-mile menu built around the kitchen garden, local foragers and Solent fishermen. The greenhouse-style dining room and rustic-luxe Piggy Bits bar feel like the prototype the whole British country-hotel scene is now copying.

Lyndhurst High Street's quirkiest stop, a former post office turned craft-beer and small-plates pub with bar stools made from old mail bins. The kitchen leans toward wood-fired pizza and proper smash burgers with a serious rotating tap list of Hampshire and further-afield breweries.

A genuinely old village pub on Clay Hill just south of Lyndhurst, with a low-beamed bar, a garden that backs onto open forest and ponies that wander right up to the picnic tables. The menu is pub classics done properly - pies, fish and chips, slow-cooked lamb - and the local Vibrant Forest ales are always on.

An unfussy French brasserie tucked inside Careys Manor on the edge of Brockenhurst, serving classics that don't apologise - escargots, steak frites, tarte tatin - in a warm bistro setting. It's the closest thing the New Forest has to a proper Lyonnaise lunch.

Family-run Sicilian-leaning trattoria right by Brockenhurst station, with hand-rolled pasta, wood-fired pizzas and arancini that come out the kitchen pass like they would in Catania. The dining room is tiny and the welcome warm; locals have made this the village's hardest table to get.

Andrew Du Bourg's Michelin-recommended modern British room in a listed building on cobbled Quay Street in Lymington, with three AA rosettes and a quietly serious approach. Menus lean on Solent seafood and Hampshire game, with a hyper-local foraged thread running through them.

Matthew Tomkinson's Samphire restaurant inside the Stanwell House boutique hotel on Lymington High Street, focused on simply cooked fish from the local boats just down the road. The dining room is bright and contemporary, and a Champagne and seafood bar runs at the front for drop-in oysters and dressed crab.

An award-winning forest-edge inn on the road between Lyndhurst and Beaulieu, with a kitchen built around seasonal Hampshire produce and a snug bar warmed by a log fire most of the year. Ponies wander the heath right outside and the deck looks straight onto open forest.

A creeper-clad coaching inn in the centre of Beaulieu village with the polished Terrace fine-dining room and the more relaxed Monty's Inn for pub classics. Both kitchens lean on a kitchen garden and the estate's own game; afternoon tea in the lounge is a proper occasion.

A whitewashed thatched country pub on the heath above Beaulieu with a rare unspoiled forest setting and the kind of garden where ponies graze the verge while you eat. Hearty pub classics, local ales and an open fire mark it out as one of the few pubs in the area that still feels properly rural.

A handsome stone inn at Bisterne Close on the edge of Burley, set in eight acres of grounds with mature lawns and a beech-shaded terrace. The kitchen does pub classics with care - proper pies, slow-cooked beef, a serious fish and chips - and there's a sun-trap garden for afternoon pints.

The handsome bay-windowed inn in the middle of Burley village, where the ponies wander up the high street and the witch-and-cider shop sits across the road. The kitchen does a generous Sunday roast and the front terrace is the village's de facto people-watching spot.

A 200-year-old coaching inn in the quiet village of Sway, refurbished without losing the bones - low ceilings, a working fireplace, a long garden for summer. The food is honest pub cooking with a kitchen-garden bias, and Sunday roast is one of the village's proper events.

Roadside thatched inn at Setley between Brockenhurst and Lymington, with a big shaded beer garden that backs onto a stretch of open forest. Comfort-food menu of pies, burgers and stone-baked pizzas, and a busy events calendar of folk music nights and quiz Tuesdays.

A 0.5-mile loop from the Bolderwood car park out to a raised wooden viewing platform looking over the deer lawn, where fallow and roe deer are regularly fed by the rangers. The wider Jubilee Grove trail adds a second mile through some of the New Forest's oldest ornamental conifers.

An easy 10-minute stroll from the dedicated car park off the A35 to the Queen of the Forest, a pollarded oak more than 500 years old and 7m round. The short loop continues through Mark Ash Wood, one of the finest stretches of ancient beech and oak in the park.

A 1.5-mile waymarked loop from Brock Hill car park near the Rhinefield Ornamental Drive through Victorian-planted redwoods, Wellingtonias and Douglas firs. The route is wide, gently undulating and easily handled with a pushchair or scooter.

A 20-minute gravel loop through a small but rich Forestry England arboretum off the Rhinefield Drive, with labelled specimens from around the world planted from the 1850s. The whole circuit is wheelchair and pushchair friendly and links to the longer Tall Trees and Highland Water trails.

A flat 5-mile out-and-back along the Solent Way sea wall from Lymington's bath road car park to Keyhaven, through 740 hectares of saltmarsh and lagoons busy with wading birds. Views run across the Solent to Hurst Castle and the Isle of Wight all the way.

A 1.5-mile stretch of single-track road between Brockenhurst and the A35 lined with Victorian conifers planted in the 1850s as a status gesture by the Rothschilds. It's the start point for the Tall Trees and Blackwater walks and a popular slow drive in its own right.

The largest pond in the New Forest, a flat heath-side lake on Beaulieu Heath that's a magnet for ice-cream queues, ponies and donkeys. An easy 1.5-mile circuit follows the bank and the bordering heath, with the Beaulieu Heath plateau spreading away to the south.

Eighteen miles of flat off-road cycling and walking on the disused Southampton-Dorchester railway, the 'Castleman's Corkscrew', running through Burley and on toward Ringwood and Wimborne. Brockenhurst to Burley via the trail and forest tracks is a classic family bike loop of around 16 miles.

A wide-open expanse of lowland heath south of Hatchet Pond, criss-crossed with sandy tracks and home to wild ponies, gorse, summer dragonflies and the occasional adder basking in the sun. Loops from East Boldre or the Beaulieu Heath car park give a real sense of the unenclosed forest.

Ancient pasture woodland at the park's northern edge near Nomansland, with gnarled beeches and oaks that have been pollarded for centuries. Quiet loops from the Bramble Hill or Half Moon car parks weave through the wood and out onto Black Heath without ever meeting a crowd.

A 4-mile loop from the hamlet of Fritham through Eyeworth Pond, Sloden Inclosure and the open heath around Latchmoor, taking in some of the quietest country in the park. The Royal Oak at Fritham is one of the New Forest's few proper unspoilt country pubs and the obvious finish.

A 5-mile waymarked walk south from Bolton's Bench through the enclosures of Park Hill and Whitemoor to Brockenhurst station, returning by train. It threads heath, oak woodland, fords and pony grazing in a single one-way wander between the park's two main villages.

A 25-acre woodland park outside Ashurst focused on native and European species - otters, lynx, wildcats, wolves, bison and a busy collection of British owls. Keeper talks run through the day and the otter feeds are the standout fixture.

A working family farm near Ashurst geared completely for younger children, with bottle-feeding of kid goats, calves and lambs, daily ferret racing, trampoline barns and a soft-play loft. The seasonal lambing and chick-hatching weeks are the busiest fixtures.

The UK's home of Peppa Pig World, set inside a much bigger theme park with proper rollercoasters including the new Valgard inverter and a long-established water-ride lineup. Plan a full day; the park is in Ower, just outside the New Forest's northern boundary.

A small centre near Ringwood specialising in birds of prey, with three flying displays daily through summer plus a separate reptile house of pythons, geckos and tortoises. Hands-on hawk-handling experiences run by appointment.

A 1,000-acre country park west of the forest near Ashley Heath with a Go Ape high-ropes course, the Stickman Trail, narrow-gauge steam railway, golf course and big children's play area. It's the rainy-day backup that turns into an all-day stop.

The original New Forest bike-hire shop next to Brockenhurst station, kitting out families and serious riders with hybrids, kids' bikes, tag-alongs and electric bikes. They also hand out the best route maps for the Castleman Trailway and Rhinefield rides.

Lord Montagu's sprawling estate combines one of the world's great car collections with the 13th-century Palace House and abbey ruins on the Beaulieu River. The motor museum holds more than 250 vehicles from Edwardian tourers to Bond cars, with a monorail and replica 1930s garage scattered across the grounds.

An 18th-century shipbuilding village frozen in time on the Beaulieu River, where three of Nelson's ships including HMS Agamemnon were built. Two grass-banked terraces of brick cottages slope down to the slipway, with a maritime museum, restored shipwright's cottage and pleasant riverside walk to the Master Builder's pub.

Lionel de Rothschild's 200-acre woodland gardens above the Beaulieu River, planted from 1919 and famous for the breeding collection of rhododendrons, azaleas and camellias that explode in late April and May. A narrow-gauge steam railway loops through the grounds for a 20-minute ride past the rock and pond gardens.

A 10-acre informal woodland garden in Minstead run by a charity that gives training to adults with learning disabilities. The big draw beyond the camellias and azaleas is the fairy door trail with more than 50 little doors carved into trunks and roots, plus a thatched 16th-century cottage on the grounds.

Henry VIII's artillery fort sits at the end of a mile-and-a-half shingle spit reaching out into the Solent, with the Isle of Wight close enough to feel like you could swim it. Charles I was held here before his execution; the Victorians later wrapped the Tudor core in armoured wings that you can wander through.

The yew-topped knoll on the edge of Lyndhurst that's been the gateway to the open forest for centuries, named after the 18th-century Duke of Bolton. From the bench you look out over Whitemoor and across to Bracken Cottage, with ponies usually grazing the cricket pitch below.

The Victorian parish church on Lyndhurst's high ridge, notable for a Pre-Raphaelite east window by Edward Burne-Jones and a fresco by Lord Leighton above the chancel arch. Alice Liddell, the original Alice in Wonderland, is buried in the churchyard under her married name Hargreaves.

Another of Henry VIII's coastal forts, this one guarding the entrance to Southampton Water from the end of a shingle spit alongside the old Sunderland flying boat hangars. The keep has been restored to show its WWI accommodation when it served as a seaplane base for the Schneider Trophy races.

Trials legend Sammy Miller's personal collection of more than 400 working motorcycles at Bashley near New Milton, recognised as one of the most important bike museums in the world. The rare race and prototype machines are still wheeled out and started up at the regular Sunday demonstration days.