The parish has a few campsites and a tourist caravan site, along with visitor parking around its mixed woodland and heath hamlet of Norley Wood.

[1] The parish covers 7,718 acres (31.23 km2) and include the hamlets of Battramsley, Sandy Down, Pilley, Bull Hill, Norley Wood, Portmore, South Baddesley, and Walhampton.

One hundred years ago, W. H. Hudson, in Hampshire Days, called the countryside north of Lymington, round the villages of Pilley and Boldre, "a land of secret, green, out-of-the-world places.".

He is buried in the churchyard of St. John the Baptist beside an old maple tree, which is inscribed: In a quiet mansion beneath this stone, secured from the afflictions and still more dangerous enjoyments of life, lie the remains of William Gilpin, sometime vicar of this parish, together with the remains of Margaret his wife....who "await patiently the joy of waking in a much happier place"...Here it will be a new joy to meet several of their good neighbours who now lie scattered in these sacred precincts around them.

Thomas Vialls, was quite absent, but made one of his rare appearances in the parish to conduct the wedding of his curate Henry Comyn and Philadelphia Heylyn in 1815.

Supposedly, a giant red lion with a wild mane, yellow eyes, large teeth, and huge stag-like antlers, pulled from the ground by verderer John Stratford in a nearby wood named Haresmede in the early 15th century.