Alderholt

Alderholt is what happens when a village decides that being three miles from anywhere is a lifestyle choice rather than a logistical problem, and then commits to it for sixty years. The railway station shut in 1964 and the place has been quietly proving it didn't need one ever since, which is either admirable self-sufficiency or the world's slowest sulk. It sits on the edge of the New Forest without quite being in it, on the edge of Cranborne Chase without quite being in that either, close enough to Fordingbridge to borrow its post town and far enough to avoid its traffic. Everything here happens at the pace of a place where the loudest recurring argument is about a bridleway.