Hetchell Wood is home to some magnificent and gnarled old beech trees, with beautiful silvery trunks surrounded by a coppery red carpet of leaves as autumn gets into full swing. As you enter the reserve, some of the very best of these beech trees can be found off to your right – do take the time to explore and spend a little time amongst the trunks. 

There is also an old limestone quarry here, and this quarry is very likely the reason these beech trees have particularly huge and twisting roots. There was a trend in the 17^th century for planting beech trees on quarried areas, and because of the thin rocky soil developed these amazing buttress roots to support their weight. On a sunny autumn day with a blue sky above, this area is the perfect place to sit for a long moment or swoosh your way through the leaves for a true grounding moment.

Follow the path around and deeper into the woods, until open grassland emerges in front of you. Managed by our roaming herd of conservation grazing cattle, this meadow is glorious in summer for orchids, dyer’s greenweed and giant bellflowers – until autumn strikes, when the grassland is speckled purple with the nodding heads of devil’s-bit scabious. Devil’s-bit scabious is a vitally important foodplant for a huge array of butterflies and bees, so expect to spot bright dashes of colour zipping in amongst the purple and violet flowers. The meadow also fills with the frothy white of greater burnet saxifrage, which attract hoverflies and other insects.

Hetchell Wood is also home to a very strange and special plant that only occurs in Yorkshire at a handful of sites in summertime – the thistle broomrape, our Species of Conservation Concern in this year’s summer magazine, which has no leaves or chlorophyll and is a parasite that mostly relies on creeping thistle for nutrients. 

From here, follow the path down through the woodland towards the soft trickle of bubbling Bardsey Beck, listening out for the cackle of jays in the canopy overhead. There’s the option to head off up into the woodland once more – in spring, this entire part of the reserve is brimming with wild garlic so pungent you can smell it on your clothes long after you’ve left! There are some magnificent oaks to discover here, arranged along a ridge with some particularly impressive and gnarly roots, and in winter this part of the reserve can look very sculptural with the bare limbs of the trees reaching towards the sky. Do see if you can spot any kites wheeling overhead; the reserve is very close to the Harewood House estate where red kites were released in 1999.

This area of mature woodland is a brilliant place to go for a bit of a fungi foray; the bright purple head of amethyst deceivers is a definitely highlight, but Eiffel Tower bracket can be spotted on some of the oaks and there is plenty of sulphur tuft on birch stumps for the eagle-eyed! A slow wander along the stream at the bottom of the reserve offers common stinkhorns beside the path, as well as greater tussock sedge which are particularly sculptural in autumn. Eventually Hetchell Craggs comes into view, a gritstone cliff that is great for adventuring – although we do ask that visitors take care on the steep paths! You will notice a little further along that there are a number of brash bundles that have been installed across the craggy slope – these are to combat erosion.

As you reach the northerly end of the reserve, stands of hazel begin to appear, jutting their way up in a spray of limbs from the forest floor. Evidence of historical coppicing for fire wood is all around. The multi-stemmed hazel stools grow back with vigour and this ancient practice lets in valuable light to the woodland floor, igniting wildflowers from the soil's depths and promoting regeneration of the trees themselves. Coppicing here is carried out by the Leeds Coppice Workers, who are a co-operative working group formed to produce local, sustainable and ethically sourced wood products and provide jobs in Leeds. They also work at Townclose Hills Nature Reserve, which we manage jointly with Leeds City Council.