'Mummy, can I have a pony?'

What do you do when you live in a city and your small daughter develops a pony obsession: take out a second mortgage or move to the country? There is a third way: resign yourself to some equicentric holidays. The logic is simple. Where do you find ponies? The New Forest.

I set off, five-year-old beside me and a big pile of borrowed camping equipment in the back. I'd raised the stakes still further with this, on the basis that the less spent on accommodation, the more would remain for the quadrupeds. Clearly, ogling them was not going to satisfy her for long. They would have to be ridden on, and even if they turned out to be thick on the ground as autumn leaves, this was bound to cost money.

Luckily, she's one of those five-year-olds who really like assembling, disassembling, reassembling and all the other endless practical chores that distinguish a camping trip from, say, a week at the Four Seasons Beverly Hills. But we arranged to park the tent in a friend's garden conveniently adjacent to the forest, just in case.

We arrived, pitched camp with lightning speed on a flattish piece of grass and immediately set off on our search. Sure enough, barely over the cattle grid were several unmistakably wild horses, each with a matching miniature, like King's Road mums on a Saturday. "Ponies!" squealed Dolly, demanding to be let out at once to pursue them. I wasn't sure about this, but it turns out that these are blasé animals, well accustomed to the glare of the flashbulb, and though they tended to wander casually away when approached too closely, they never showed any signs of active hostility.

Nor were the ponies the only animals meandering through the glades and across the roads; there are roaming cows and herds of donkeys, and the deer gather to be fed every day at Bolderwood. You could have a perfectly enjoyable trip just exploring the forest, especially with children old enough to bicycle and numerous enough to play games.

But we were only two, one very young and one very old, and she had been promised riding. The leaflet provided by the tourist office at Lyndhurst listed several stables, all offering rides on forest ponies. We began at Burley Manor Stables, where expert riders were able to canter over the open heathland while those of us more comfortable with an ignition key and a brake ambled decorously along. After an hour, I was walking like John Wayne, but Dolly showed no sign of anything other than enthusiasm to repeat the experience as soon as possible.

The Silver Horseshoe Riding Centre caters only for children, so, this time, as she rode through beautiful sylvan lanes and over heathery moorland, I was walking alongside, bosom swelling with pride as I witnessed her first solo trotting, and with elation as the little convoy of saddled ponies suddenly mingled with a large herd of wild ones, on a sunny upland under an endless sky.

Those were two hugely enjoyable hours, but we had five days to fill. Even in high summer, nowhere was unbearably busy, and nothing in the forest is ever more than an hour away. We had a good morning at Longdown Activity Farm, where we fed baby cows, baby goats and baby pigs, held baby chicks and collected their less fortunate siblings in the shell from under their mothers for tea. The farm offered wagon rides, mini tractors, trampolines and a playground by a sunny picnic meadow.

Almost next door is the New Forest Otter, Owl and Wildlife Park, a captivating woodland setting for some of the happiest otters, hedgehogs, wallabies and wild boars you could hope to see. An investment of £1.50 on the animal-print trail turned out to be a magnificently simple stratagem for getting small children to explore every inch in search of clues.

We duly found them all and, as we approached the desk to claim her prize, Dolly turned to me and said solemnly: "D'you know, Mummy, this is the first time I've ever won anything." Luckily, she seemed quite happy with her Nature-Lover's Magnifying Glass, under which the cafe's chocolate Mini Milk looked, not surprisingly, at least three times more alluring than at normal size.

But the real luxury was just being able to wander at will and stop when we felt like it: at Buckler's Hard, where Nelson's ships were built; or at the Gorley Bygone Days fair, a scene straight from the 1940s, with steam engines, hand-knitted tea cosies, plant stalls, hurdle-makers and home baking. The tractor parade was cancelled after the tractors were hedged in by the knitters and hurdle-makers, but everybody seemed happy with a log-splitting demonstration instead. As we all know, the only thing more relaxing than idleness is idleness spent watching others split logs.

Dolly was wonderful company, apart from her somewhat monotonous taste in music - there's a limit to how many times you can enthusiastically raise your voice for Say Little Hen, though, remarkably, there seems no limit to the number of times the same tune can run around in your head while you're trying to sleep.

Ah. Sleep. That's the other thing. For the most part, camping was fine: bare feet on wet grass, playing dominoes by torchlight, badger holes to tiptoe round at dusk and bunnies frolicking over the morning meadows. But whoever invented the cone-shaped sleeping bag dropped off a very different branch of the genealogical tree. Each night of rolling over left us both squashed together, not on the comfy airbeds, but on the cold, hard ground. We could, however, have stayed in any number of B&Bs in the forest itself, including one where the truly horse-mad child can bring her own pony.

And, as we dismantled our temporary home, the great unsung advantage of camping revealed itself; if you take the hotel home with you, it's impossible to leave anything behind.

"Did you enjoy that?" I inquired.

"Yes!" she replied. Followed by a few - a very few - minutes' pause for thought, during which time I suddenly realised the monstrous pit I had dug myself.

"When can I start riding lessons?"

Travel brief

Where to stay: Forestry Commission camp sites are available from Forest Holidays (0131 314 6505, www.forestholidays.co.uk; from £6.90 per pitch per night). The Master Builder's House Hotel, at Buckler's Hard (01590 616253, www.themasterbuilders.co.uk), has doubles from £180. Or try the White House (01425 655607, www.newforestbandb.co.uk), near Fordingbridge; doubles from £55. Riding: Burley Manor Stables (01425 403489) has one-hour rides for £25. The Silver Horseshoe Riding Centre (01725 510678) has half-hour rides for £10.

Other attractions: Longdown Activity Farm (023 8029 3326, www.longdownfarm.co.uk; £6, child £5); the New Forest Otter, Owl and Wildlife Park (023 8029 2408, www.ottersandowls.co.uk; £6.95/£4.95).