apache 2.2 conf issue

["j k" <jonnykent@xxxxxxxxx>]

I'm upgrading from 2.0.59 to 2.2.6 on a gentoo box and the vhost config is giving me grief:

2.2.6 will deliver normal content from the document root /var/ww/localhost/htdocs via http://myserver when only 
vhosts.d/00_default_vhost.conf  and  
vhosts.d/default_vhost.include 
are present, 

however as soon as I add a single virtual host   
vhosts.d/0000_any_80_myserver.conf

it returns a 403 for the document root when I access http://myserver
The default vhost conf and default vhost include are unchanged except for serveradmin and the extra virtual host is plain vanilla:
<VirtualHost *:80>
        ServerName myserver
        ServerAdmin admin@myserver
        DocumentRoot "/var/www/localhost/htdocs"
        DirectoryIndex index.php index.html
        CustomLog "/var/log/apache2/access_log" "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-agent}i\""
</VirtualHost>
 The error log says:
client denied by server configuration: /var/www/localhost/htdocs/
so I know I've messed up something but I can't see the wood for the trees...

I am beginning to think that I left something out when I compiled 2.2 as 2.0.59 was working fine previously so here's the modules: 
 # /usr/sbin/apache2 -M
Loaded Modules:
 core_module (static)
 mpm_prefork_module (static)
 http_module (static)
 so_module (static)
 alias_module (shared)
 auth_basic_module (shared)
 authz_host_module (shared)
 authz_user_module (shared)
 cgi_module (shared)
 deflate_module (shared)
 dir_module (shared)
 env_module (shared)
 expires_module (shared)
 filter_module (shared)
 headers_module (shared)
 include_module (shared)
 log_config_module (shared)
 logio_module (shared)
 mime_module (shared)
 negotiation_module (shared)
 rewrite_module (shared)
 setenvif_module (shared)
Syntax OK



What am I missing here? thanks all