Hatch Lot Conservation – Norwell, MA

I discovered the Hatch Lot Conservation like I do most trails, I drove by and the sign caught my eye. So I put in my mental hikes memory bank until we got home. The Hatch Lot trails are located right behind Hornstra Farms, which means we’ll be back to go again in the Spring when the ice cream window opens.

This trail is about a a mile long through the woods behind the farm and a few neighborhoods before it dips out into the Burnt Plain Swamp. The swap itself is hundreds of acres and has two different watersheds according to the North South River Watershed Association, which they said means half the water in the swamp flows to one watershed while the other half flows to a different one.

These trails are a little different than the ones we usually go on since most of them are usually just giant loops , this one though has a bunch of side trails that go into neighborhoods and one of them looked like it even ended in someone’s backyard. These trails also don’t show on the AllTrails App unless you really search for them, which I use just about every time we go somewhere new, the last thing I want to do when hiking with two toddlers is take a wrong turn and end up late for lunch time. You’ll want to find your GPS location to find where your going, if you search for the “Hatch Lot” it yields no results.

The main trail is marked by white spots on the trees and passes through a beech-covered drumlin hill which is pretty cool. We’re basically always surrounded by oaks and pines so the beech trees are a nice change. There’s a bench about halfway through the trail that you can stop and sit on but also a LOT of roots, like a lot of lot, along the whole thing. There are also a bunch of rocks, so make sure you are paying attention or you’ll trip which I think our kid did at least a gazillion times.

There is one part that was our favorite, if you take a left at the first intersection it will eventually take you down a hill to a stream and a few little waterfalls. My two kids and by that I mean my son and my husband, had a lot of fun putting twigs in the water and watching them go over the waterfall down the stream.

Overall, this trail only had a few bridges, two at the beginning near the parking lot, and then in the swap itself, which is part of the yellow parked trail so our bridge rating is low. Also, a stroller is definitely not going to work here, there are way too many roots, rocks and unsteady grounds to try but a carried works just fine!