The Plantation

Bournemouth is not an old town. Not by British standards, anyway. It was founded in 1810, the same year a few fine fellows in New Spain declared independence from their colonial masters and founded Mexico. A town of 200 years old in England is just a babe.

Bournemouth was heathland, but vast plantations of fir and pine appeared. The pine gives the air a purifying, healing quality. Or so it was believed. The trees are still here, although the Forestry guys have been clearing patches of of it to return land to its natural condition as heathland.