For budding botanists there's a tour of gardens and trees at Staunton Country Park, Havant on Wednesday 16 December, while the more adventurous could try the hilly, five-mile circular walk of Catherington via Prew's Hanger and Horndean on Sunday 20 December. There's a walk through the beautiful countryside which surrounds Kings Somborne on Sunday 27 December and a mammoth 13-mile circular walk around the attractive sections of the Test Way, Wherwell, Longstock and the famous fort at Danebury Hill, near Andover on Monday 28 December. 2 Start the New Year on 1 January 1999 by joining a ranger for a welcome breath of fresh air in the winter forest at Burley, or a New Year's Day tour of Sir Harold Hillier Gardens and Arboretum, near Ampfield. Cheesefoot Head, near Winchester, is the starting point for a superb ten-mile hike across glorious open country on Saturday 2 January. The Victorian glasshouses of Staunton Country Park are being toured on Saturday 2 January.
Visitors can learn all about the history and the tropical planting during the one-mile walk.
A circular walk starting from Eversley Church, where Charles Kingsley of 'The Water Babies' fame was rector and is buried, is being held place on Sunday 3 January and takes walkers around the village and through Bramshill Forest. On the same day there is a circular walk from Selbourne through the Rother Valley - with an optional extra four miles for the really fit. On the day before children go back to school, there's a circular walk touching on the South Downs Way, the shrinking navy and the gospel ghosts of Clanfield. The three hour walk on Tuesday 5 January is suitable for accompanied children. There are dozens of other walks and events taking place right up until March 1999.