Autumn’s gloryall around on ‘ leaf- peeping’ tour of county
LIKE TRICK or treat, we have imported the tradition of leaf peeping from the USA.
It’s the name given to journeys which people make to enjoy seeing the rich displays of leaves produced when deciduous trees change colour in autumn.
In the USA, New England is particularly famous for its annual tapestries of bright red, gold, yellow and orange hues, and perhaps the most popular leaf peeping excursion is the 35- mile long “Kanc” ( Kancamagus Scenic Highway) which runs through the White Mountains. Some tour operators also seek out New England landscapes associated with the poet Robert Frost, who eulogised the season with the lines: “O hushed October morning mild, Thy leaves have ripened to the fall.”
So where are Yorkshire’s best leaf- peeping locations?
There’s certainly no shortage, and whether you are on foot or on wheels, there will be plenty to choose from in October, the prime leaf- peeping month.
Top of my list for walkers is Hardcastle Crags, near Hebden Bridge. Over the past 40 years I’ve barely missed an autumn trip to these National Trustowned woods, tramping most of the 15 miles of paths through the oak, beech and pine trees and climbing up to the hamlet of Slack to look down on the kaleidoscope of colours filling Hebden Dale.
Another favourite October walk is just over the hill, from Haworth in the Worth Valley, where the season was celebrated in verse by our own Emily Brontë with the words: “Every leaf speaks bliss to me, Fluttering from the autumn tree.”
It’s also hard to beat the walk along the River Wharfe between Bolton Bridge and Barden Bridge on a fine autumn day, or Alfred Wainwright’s Pennine Journey route following the River Swale from Muker to Keld, where the reds and golds along the lower hillsides contrast with the dazzling green pastures and bone- white limestone scars.
My fifth leaf peeper for walkers has to be the Woodland Trust’s Hackfall Wood on the River Ure, downstream from Masham, which was so popular with Victorians, they had to buy a ticket. Today, entrance is free to enjoy the mixture of sycamores, beeches, silver birches and rowan trees, and although it’s possible to make a short visit from the nearby village of Grewelthorpe, for the best views follow the Ripon Rowell footpath from the village of Mickley.
Leaf- peepers on wheels are also well catered for, and my favourite autumn journey has to be south through Bishopdale from Aysgarth to the top of the Kidstones Pass. The A170 up Sutton Bank is another outstanding leaf peeper, as is the climb up its equivalent in the Yorkshire Wolds, the A166 at Garrowby Hill.
Best experienced from a bike saddle, hanging woodlands in those deep Wolds valleys like Thixendale and Millingtondale provide many of the most vivid autumn scenes of all, some captured by David Hockney. To see the location of one of his works, a beautiful late autumn scene painted on an iPad, visit Woodgate Woods between Bridlington and the village of Kilham.