The wildest and loneliest, if not the most beautiful part of the Forest is to be found in the north-west, where a hilly tract lies between the road from Cadnam to Picked Post and that from Nomansland to Fordingbridge, and stretches westward from Bramshaw to the rampart of high down which parts the Forest from the Avon valley. Here there are no crossroads to break it up; only bridle-paths or rough cart tracks, often impassable in winter by reason of bogs, connect the lonely Forest lodges with each other. And what variety is here! From dense woods, hushed in noonday stillness, the wayfarer emerges on some unexpected crest, looking clear away over the Wiltshire Downs. By some sudden slope from a long, bleak, drear ridge he comes upon a still, dark pool with swans sailing on it. A little lonely hamlet has sprung up at the edge of the pond, and a modern gunpowder factory, put here to be well out of the way of the public--as indeed it is. Transversely run two valleys with their streams, Latchmore Brook to make its way between the downs under Gorley Hill, and Docken Water, widening as it flows through the marshy bottom, till it joins the Avon at Moyles Court. Coming down the broken upland through Broomy by winding ways and chalky ledges, at dusk one may see a little troop of deer stooping their branchy heads to drink at the brook by Holly Hatch, here called Broomy Water. Here one may well fancy the colt-pixy the old tales tell of, light-stepping with waving mane and tail, "in the likeness of a filly foal", luring the horses into the bog that spreads from the stream up to the slopes of Ibsley Common. From Brook, lying in a wooded hollow on the Forest border, the road goes steeply up to Bramshaw, an unspoilt village, not grouped about its church as an orderly village should be, but squandered all along a mile or more of road between that and the post office. The little sanctuary stands, as all the Forest churches do, raised upon a mound, and is approached by a flight of steps so long and steep as to make the tired wayfarer think of the ascent to some shrine in a Catholic country, and wonder how much indulgence is due to him for his climb. The quaint building has lost much of the charm that makes Minstead so gracious. It has been to some extent brought up to date, and further penance is imposed on the worshipper by new open sittings, hideous to the eye, cruel to the back. Once, before a readjustment of boundaries, it had the fascinating peculiarity of its nave being in Wiltshire and its chancel in Hampshire.