In July 2016 as we were planning this trip we saw an article on the news which was about a stained glass window with a NZ theme being installed in a church at Brockenhurst.
The window was to commentate the 100 or so NZ WW1 soldiers who were evacuated from the front to a hospital in Brockenhurst but who unfortunately died.
Naturally we included a visit on this trip and today while en route to Portsmouth we detoured to Brockenhurst arriving mid morning.
The window is in St Nicholas's Church the oldest church in the New Forest area but to our great disappointment the church only "opens" between 2 & 5 daily
We walked around the church and found the window at the rear but because of reflections from the trees behind and the fact that the sun was coming from another direction the design was very difficult to see
whereas it looks like the following from the inside
We then searched for the memorial in the cemetery and was very pleased to find a very well kept area, (the general upkeep of the cemetery could best be described as "overrun") with engraved headstones for our soldiers
On one of the headstones a previous visitor had left a NZ 20c piece - how long it has been there or how long it will remain is the great unknown
We continued on to Gosport which is across the Solent from Portsmouth where our B&B is located and walked along the waterfront in rather windy conditions which gave a good view of the Isle of Wight which sits some 4 miles out in the Solent - if the number of ferries steaming back and forth is any indication then the Isle is either well populated or well visited.
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