Earlier in the year, I went to a Café Scientifique talk: “Wilding Waterhall: Working with nature to maximise biodiversity” given by Mike Luscombe, one of the rangers. One thing I learned that evening was that they’d created some named walks across the reserve. It’s been on my to-do list ever since, but the opportunity hadn’t arisen, or when it did, we had a problem with temperature or access.

Dry summer grassland sloping down into a wooded valley at Waterhall

Today, we managed to get there. We mostly followed the Buzzard Hike and were impressed with the size of the place. There is still plenty more for us to explore.

View over the Waterhall reserve with a patchwork of fields and wooded hillside under a wide sky

It is so easy for us to get to that I suspect we will return in autumn.