UCR: Habens Lane/Menslands Lane

• Overall Rating: 2
• Location: Hambledon, Hampshire.
• OS Explorer Map 119, 'Meon Valley'.
• Starting OS Grid Reference: SU637134
• Starting GPS Co-ordinates: N50 91' 70" W001 09' 50"
• Finishing OS Grid Reference: SU639142
• Finishing GPS Co-ordinates: N50 92' 40" W001 09' 20"
• To see: tumuli.
• ALWAYS follow the Greenlane Code! 

Starting off as the remains of a metalled road and quickly deteriorating to a flint rubble surface, Habens Lane strikes out uphill in a westerly direction. There is evidence of tyre tracks so, although the byway is by no means regularly used and the foliage is just beginning to encroach, it does see some use. It's pretty easy going, if narrow in places.

The byway soon levels off and turns briefly to the north before turning west again where a footpath crosses the track. On entering the southern tendril of the curiously titled 'Madam's Copse' a junction rears its head. The only realistic way onward for a 4x4 driver is to turn north on to Menslands Lane: Habens Lane passes through a quagmire that someone has quite obviously gotten stuck in previously: it's a right state, and after said quagmire the greenlane becomes blocked by a tree, making it slightly too narrow for a 4x4 to force past anyway. Nothing to see here, move along.

Menslands Lane offers a much easier time of it up through Madam's Copse, turns east and then back north, past the pond that lends its name to the byway. It ends up back on the tarmac at Glebeland Farm. It's not a great drive to be honest and hardly worth the bother of venturing out of one's way, hence the 2.

For those with an interest in history, three tumuli can be found in a field to the south-east of the eastern end of Habens Lane.

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