The best dog-friendly hikes and walks around Fawley

good parking and facilities

gets you close to the shipping to and from Southampton and gaze in awe at the sheer size of the boat's

Lepe Beach is part of Lepe Country Park and is a mixture of sand and shingle. With views of the Isle of Wight and a cafe by the car park, this is an excellent place to stop, enjoy the scenery and even have a swim in the sea.

Calshot Spit is in the perfect position for defending Southampton Water. Calshot Castle (surrounded by aircraft hangars) is a Tudor Fort that was built by Henry VIII in the 16th century using stone reused from Beaulieu Abbey. It was later fortified by the Victorians. During the World War I, Calshot provided Channel defence and a training base for pilots. In 1929 and 1931 Calshot was the venue of the famous Schneider Cup Trophy race and was the base of the Supermarine S6 seaplane. Calshot played an important role in the World War II and became home to the Sunderland Flying Boat. Find out more about the history of Calshot inside the Sunderland hangar.

Now a fishing lake, Mopley Pond was formed some time in the past by damming the valley where two streams met to form a mill pond for the Mopley watermill on the Bourne. The earlies known reference to a mill here is 1626, but the mill referred to under Woodington in 1555 is almost certainly Mopley. The mill appears on the Fawley tithe map of 1838, but it has been removed by the OS Survey undertaken in 1868. The PLUTO pipeline ran from the holding tanks on Badminston Common to a pump house at Mopley Pond, but was removed after the war. The pump-house was constructed of corrugated iron with a gabled tin roof and double doors in the end, making it look like a domestic garage. All that is left today is the concrete base, and even this is overgrown with vegetation. From Mopley to Stone Point on the Lepe foreshore, the PLUTO pipeline then ran underwater across the Solent to Thorness Bay on the Isle of Wight and thence across the Island to Shankling Chine, where it crossed the Channel to the Cherbourg Peninsular.

This millpond once provided a water reserve for the Mill downstream. The pond was drained in 1866, but features of the pond (its bay and sluce) can still be seen today.

There were many wartime installations in the Fawley area, including the storage tanks used for the PLUTO project, a Second World War Pipe Line Under the Ocean. These were located at the end of Badminston Lane in an area generally known as the Common. It was largely open heathland, much like the New Forest, covered with heather and gorse. The tanks measured about 180 metres by 100 metres and stood about three or four metres high. They were covered over with soil and sand and then grassed over to conceal their position and purpose. The removal of the sand and gravel left a huge scar on the landscape about a metre deep and required to be camouflaged. This was achieved by lopping off the top 2 metres of pine trees, positioning them in the manner of plantation trees and securing them in position with wooden pegs and galvanised iron wire. They soon became a local feature as a forest of small dead tree tops! Badminston Common was used for common grazing land in the 18th century. Gravel has been extracted from this area for years. The now flooded Badminston gravel pit is a haven for all sorts of wildlife.

As you pass Grassy Copse (to the east of this path), the views to the south towards Lepe Shore (with obvious fantastic views of the Isle of Wight beyond) are nothing short of spectacular. Added for good measure is the tranquil experience of walking through the wheat field farmland here. Lepe might be a very short distance away, but it sure feels here like you are many miles away from it all.