(Gate opening)
Hello and welcome to Gone Walking. It’s mid-morning in the week before Easter and today I’m taking a walk around the fields, lanes, and woodland to the East of Leeds. It’s a murky old spring morning. As I travelled to the start of the walk, there was low cloud and mist hanging over the fields and vales and just as I took my few steps the rain, that I think may have set in for a couple of hours began.
The walk today starts by the Crooked Billet. It’s on the road from Garforth to Tolton. In the field opposite the pub is an old chapel. The Lead Chapel, a settlement at Lead was first mentioned in the Doomsday Book back in the ten hundreds and all that remains of the settlement now is the chapel. I think the field that it’s set in would have had timber houses, but they’ve long gone. Just the bumps and hollows, presumably where buildings once were.
(Walking and birdsong)
Apart from the rain, it’s a gorgeous morning. Blackthorn is still flowering and some of the Hawthorn is just coming into flower. There are fields planted with Rapeseed that is grown for its oil and is already flowering, starting to mature and there are other fields around that have been left fallow where another crop of Rapeseed from last year seems to be coming through.
(Walking and sound of rain)
The Vale of York is about five miles to the West, and this is just the start of the low Pennine foothills. The hills that here are low and rolling, slowly get higher the further West you travel. After crossing the field with the church sitting atmospherically at the centre, we join a lane that gradually climbs uphill. This if you continue travelling North would take you straight through to the Hazelwood Castle but I’ve turned off and I’m heading West now along the course of the Cock Beck or River Cock as it’s sometimes known. This small river starts actually in the Leeds city area and flows East for maybe ten miles before it joins the River Wharfe just South of Tadcaster. It has some notoriety as the river that ran red with blood following the Battle of Towton. The battlefield is on some higher ground about two miles to the West of this location. If memory serves me correctly it was in the War of The Roses that the battle was fought. Its renowned to be the bloodiest battle fought on I guess English soil. There tens of thousands of people killed on the day in the most brutal fashion you could imagine. Hard to imagine on a peaceful day like today.
(Walking and sound of rain)
Along the flat valley floor is a line of trees. Not yet in leaf but covered in Lichen, every branch dripping with bright yellow Lichen. To my right is a field and the hill gently climbs up to some woodland. In the distance and to the right is Hayton Wood which I think I’ll walk through. Just seen a Hare in the field to my right, not sure what it was doing running backwards and forwards and then disappeared into the distance. Often see Red Kites and Buzzards when walking round here and I have been lucky enough just last year to see an Otter. I felt so privileged as the creature I don’t think had heard me as it had its head under water, just its tail and back legs were sticking up and it must have stayed like that for two or three minutes. Just flowing with the current looking for food. I froze because I wanted to get my phone out to take a photograph, get my binoculars out to have a closer look at it but in the end, I just stood perfectly still and enjoyed the moment, it disappeared upstream.
(Walking, birdsong and tranquil)
I’ve turned away from the river now and up the gently sloping valley sides to a point where I can enter Hayton Wood plantation. It’s a beautiful spot this, I often stop to have my lunch here and it’s no less beautiful in the rain. Trees along the top of both ridges, the whole landscape has a misty quality. The trees still dark brown mostly, not fully in leaf yet. A field in the distance bright yellow from the Rapeseed but very calming, a lovely day.
This wood’s lovely it’s not very mature I think it must be a commercial woodland. Walking uphill along the track, there are Bluebells, Wild Primroses, and little creamy white flowers in profusion of the Wood Anemone. Spring really has arrived.
(Walking on wet ground, birdsong, tranquil)
There are Primroses all along the side of the path, Bluebells in the woodland and occasionally among the Primroses the tiny little purple flower of the Common Dog Violet, with its small flowers hanging like bells very close to the ground.
(Walking, birdsong and tranquil)
I’ll just stop walking for a moment. If you can imagine, even though we’re at low level we’re shrouded in low cloud, the rain steadily falling.
(Birdsong, tranquil and sound of rain)
In places the leaves are just starting to burst through on trees in the wood and they look like, well to my wild imagination distant galaxies, drifting off, deep into space. One huge cluster of tiny green shoots, followed by another and another. Going further and further back, almost to infinity in the mist.
I’ve left the wood now and I’m walking on a good track that serves the farms in the locality. I’m gonna turn right shortly, go through the hedgerow. This area has quite a lot of horse racing stables. Not really something I know much about but through the hedgerow I come out onto some gallops with the little white plastic fencing that runs around racecourses, a racetrack. I’ve never yet seen any horses galloping round it and in the middle of that is a small copse. A small, wooded area and it’s one of the few areas on this whole walk that has very mature trees.
In the distance just coming into view is Hazelwood Castle.
(Walking)
Crossing the field inside the racetrack and dropping down Hazelwood Castle comes fully into view, and it looks very nice on a day like today. Shrouded in mist, set as it is in parkland. I’m not sure of its exact history, it was originally a stately home. I believe Mary Queen of Scots stayed there overnight on her travels. I think later it passed into private hands and for a long time was a religious retreat. In more recent times it has become a swanky hotel.
There are two lovely horses now in a field that I have to go through. Big horses, both looking at me. Don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before but I’m a city lad. They are lovely though, but I do hope they move before I have to walk through the field. Well so far so good. I didn’t think they were going to move away from the stile, but they did. I’m not sure if shoo, please go away is a proper horse term but they seemed to understand.
(Walking)
I’ve left the fields now and I’m back on a well-made track. This whole area between Aberford and Saxton and Stutton near Tadcaster is criss crossed by farm tracks linking up the various small communities. I don’t know if it’s unusual so close to a city but there are mile upon mile of unmade roads around here and its always fairly peaceful to walk. Just by the side of the track is an old summerhouse about two storeys high built like a round small castle that I guess would have been used when this was a home and the land all around private. It’s a lovely feature but has fallen into disrepair and now sitting as it is by a busy farm track surrounded by farm buildings, but one seems to have a good use for it.
(Walking, birdsong, and distant traffic noise)
I can now see the A64, that’s the main Leeds to Scarborough road. I’m still on high ground, to my right now I can see the Vale of York just beginning. I remember from a school geography lesson that although the A64 crosses the Vale of York, as it does so its higher than the surround land. This I remember being told is due to the fact that it had been built on a moraine at the end of a glacier that ended here in the last ice age. Hard to imagine really looking at this green rain-soaked afternoon that it would have once been like Antarctica. All along these tracks are farms every few miles most of them as ancient as Hazelwood Castle
(Walking, birdsong, and traffic noise)
I’ve skirted the edge of Hazelwood Castle and I’m now heading back into woodland. Another plantation. This one is called Hazel Wood, again mostly deciduous trees. The woods are very still, peaceful today. To my right a large area that’s recently been cleared and hundreds if not thousands of new young trees have been planted.
(Walking on wet ground and traffic noise)
I’m reaching the end of Hazel Wood. There’s a farm just beyond the boundary. It’s absolutely delightful this last section. Ther are Wodd Anemones and there are literally thousands of them. Twenty, thirty yards wide on either side of the path. I think its stopped raining, the droplets are dripping from the trees onto the woodland floor splashing on the delicate leaves and flower. They’re a creamy white bell-shaped flower with just a hint of pink where the flower meets the stem.
(Walking)
I’ve left the wood now and I’m walking down a pleasant lane with a hedge at one side and mature trees and open fields with electricity pylons running through on the right. In the distance going up from the valley bottom near Aberford towards Hook Moor and Micklefield I can see the eight lanes of the A1(M) in the mist and murk. It looks quite ominous, the lights on vehicles moving at seemingly a snail’s pace. Yet they’ll be hurtling along in the rain at sixty, seventy, eighty miles an hour. It looks quite eerie like some far off monster slowly working its way across the North of England.
Ahead just where there is a fork in the track there’s a Kestrel hovering about twenty feet above the footpath. Beautiful birds when you see them up close.
(Walking, loud traffic noise)
I’m now walking at the side of the motorway. Theres a steep banking leading down to it and at the opposite side a steep banking going up to the village of Aberford. The village is cut off from this countryside other than a couple of footbridges and a couple of access tunnels. It is a nice village though. Still got lots of pretty little cottages along what was the main road. Hard to imagine all the traffic going North to South passing through it. Even here though wildlife is making its presence felt, the banking is covered in bright yellow Cowslips the trumpet like flowers quite majestic against the violent noisy backdrop.
(Loud traffic noise)
The whole of this area that I’ve been walking in today is criss crossed by ancient earthworks. I’m just coming up to one of them now at the lowest point I reach by the motorway so therefore the noisiest. There is through an information board so for once my podcast may have some accurate facts.
(Lound traffic noise)
I’m standing by Becca Banks. The longest of three large banks and ditches known as the Aberford Dykes. The other two are South Dyke and Woodhouse Moor Rein. The run across a North South limestone ridge an important prehistoric route which was later followed by the Castleford to Tadcaster Roman road. The medieval Great North Road between London and Edinburgh, the former A1 and the present A1(M).
The dykes were previously thought to have protected the local Iron Age tribe the Brigantes against the advance of the Roman empire in the first century AD. Others have suggested they defended the later British kingdom of Elmet against the Anglo Saxons in the late sixth and early seventh century or protected the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Deira against the Mercians. Archaeological excavations have confirmed Becca Banks and South Dyke are 2500 years old, dating to the late iron Age around 400 BC to AD 70.
Becca Banks runs East to West for 5.5 Kilometres, from Potterton bridge in the West to Hayton Wood in the East. The bank was built above the north side of the beck with a ditch on the downslope. By using the natural slope, the earthwork would originally have been almost nine metres high from the bottom of the ditch to the top of the bank.
South Dyke lies on the South side of Cock Beck to the East of the A1(M) and is only one kilometre long. The ditch is on the upslope north side of the bank and the West end runs down towards a possible crossing point of the beck. In the best-preserved parts, the bank stands up to three metres high and the ditch ten metres wide.
Woodhouse Moor Rein is almost two kilometres long and in place the bank is five metres high and up to sixteen metres wide. The exact date and function of this substantial earthwork remains obscure.
(Walking and traffic noise receding)
Walking away from the motorway towards the East Becca Banks is to my right. I’m actually on top of the earthwork with the banking dropping sharply down to the ditch. To the West the whole area has been destroyed by the motorway. Going in this direction the bank goes all the way into Hayton Wood where it’s actually very clear that here is an earthwork there.
I’ve now turned off and I’m heading on a service road still following the course of the motorway. I go passed the water treatment plant for Aberford, uphill and then back inland towards my starting point. Even in recent times Aberford had three pubs which were all coaching inns in earlier times. The mail coach and stagecoaches travelling on the long journey North and South would stop. They had stables and accommodation. Two of them are now closed, been sold I think for private houses and there’s just one pub left in the village. As teenagers or in our early twenties we got into the habit of coming out here on a Fridy night. I’m not sure who we thought we were. There were plenty of pubs in the city that we went in, but we used to like our bus ride. I think it was just the fact that a bus came to the very edge of Leeds out into the countryside. So, we’d finish work on a Friday. Come here, drink copious amounts of beer, have fish and chips and go home on the bus.
(Walking)
I’ve left the service road now; I’m heading back inland towards the Crooked Billet. Behind me is the motorway and at the other side of it Aberford. I followed the road for about a mile and a half, and my ears are throbbing from the noise.
Ahead of me going roughly North to South, Woodhouse Moor Rein. The whole thing is now filled with hedge plants and trees but the closer you get the clearer it becomes. From my side there’s a straight drop down into a ditch and then on the other side a steep banking leading up to a raised earthwork. Standing where I’m stood human beings have been busy living their lives for thousands upon thousands of years. I always imagine there would have been wooden fencing running along the top and inside presumably communities, farms, animals.
(Walking)
Just negotiating the banking (slips and laughs) it’s a little bit treacherous after all the rain for the last few hours and out the other side the view opens up once again. Looking across to Hazel Wood in the far distance and Hayton Wood in the near distance.
(Walking, birdsong and tranquil)
I’m at the point now where I pick up my path that I followed out this morning. I’m at the crossing point of the beck. The waters quite fast flowing with all the rain but lovely and clear. I’ve never found anywhere deep enough to swim yet; I imagine there’s a little pool somewhere along here.
(Walking and birdsong)
Theres a Red Kite just overhead, not often I don’t come on this walk and see one. They’re quite common now and I believe were either extinct or almost extinct in the UK not so many years ago. Has to be one of the most successful reintroductions of a bird.
(Birdsong)
I think Otters are doing well though because growing up as a child they were very rare, or they seemed to be. A lot of the rivers were very badly polluted, and I read somewhere that there aren’t many rivers now in Yorkshire that don’t have Otters in them which is wonderful because they’re such a beautiful creature.
This little river or beck has had a lot of work done to it. I believe the environment agency did work to improve its flow and put weirs in and I believe there are Salmon now coming to lay their eggs in it which maybe explains why I saw an Otter in it.
I’ve been lucky the sighting last summer was the third time I’ve seen Otters. The first time was at a campsite at Ullapool about twenty-five years ago and to this day I swear it came up out of the water, took and Oyster Catcher, took it underwater, came back up and sat on the rock eating it.
The second time was a wonderful experience. I was walking with one of my sons on the Kyle of Durness in the very North of Scotland and he went all David Attenborough on me and laid down in the path. I followed suit and the cliff there is only a few metres. Three or four metres down to the beach and it’s a vast expanse of sand is the Kyle of Durness when the tide goes out and there was an Otter and a young Otter.
And we watched it for about twenty minutes and basically the mother or the father had caught a fish that was still alive, and they came up the shoreline amongst the rocks, let go of the fish which then tried wriggling back to sea and the little Otter was having loads of fun. Chasing it, catching it. I guess it was teaching it how to hunt and this went on for about ten minutes and the poor fish had no chance. Until eventually the mother went to the water’s edge got the fish, came back up on the shore and bit into its head and we were so close we actually heard the crunch. It was fabulous and then the two creatures sat there, ate the fish and we watched them walking off across the sand disappearing into the distance.
But they’ve all been great sighting that I’ll remember all my life. Not least the one last year because I never really expected to see one a mile or so from the Leeds boundary.
(Walking)
Almost back at the start of my walk back in the field where the Lead Chapel is, the Crooked Billet Pub in the distance. I forgot to mention earlier, its well known for its giant Yorkshire Puddings. Has been for many years, I think there’s been a pub there for hundreds and hundreds of years, but you can get Yorkshire Puddings for every course, starter, main and desert.
I’m just coming up to the chapel which is now owned by the Redundant Churches Trust. I think for a lot of years it was derelict and then was restored. Its no longer used as a church apart from once a year when they have an annual service but its open to the public and it’s a lovely spot to sit outside in summer or to sit inside on a cold winter’s day.
A place to pause and reflect on the days walk, the days exertions and what tomorrow might bring. Theres often sheep in the field surrounding it so there’s a little gate (gate unlocking) protecting the door which is ancient and weathered. (Enters chapel, door opening and closing).
The first documentary evidence of the church is in 1421 and that it was a church for a little estate and that 1596 it was in complete ruin. In the eighteenth century it was restored and the three-deck pulpit that it now has in the left-hand corner was installed. Its very simple with just half dozen rows of pews, the three-deck pulpit, and a stone altar. The roof is made of wood and there are various coats of arms and inscriptions on the walls. The doors interesting, it has various writing on the back of it.
Rededicated by the Bishop of Whitby in 1932, this chapel was repaired in 1784, built about 1150 AD.
There are streaks of lights coming through the gaps in the panel. I do love sitting in old churches where people have sat before me for almost a thousand years. The pews are beautiful, I’m guessing they’d be Oak, but they’re damaged, and you can see the marks of the tools. Where bits of wood have broken off, they show their age.
(Door opening and closing as leaves church)
I’ll say cheerio and if you can join me next time for the Gone Walking Podcast.
(Walking, birdsong, and podcast ends)
Gone Walking 