Month: November 2024
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Windermere and its History No One Wants to Discuss
It was a bit wet this morning in the Lakes, so here is a photograph from yesterday’s walk up Wansfell instead. This is, of course, Windermere, England’s largest lake, famed for its picturesque scenery but cursed with a history no postcard could capture. And I don’t mean the recent sewage discharge debacle. A favourite with…
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Wansfell to Kirkstone and Rosa’s Vanishing Echoes
A gentle stroll today, nursing our tired legs from previous heroics. Here is Wansfell, gazing northward at a line-up of Red Screes, Kirkstone Pass, Stony Cove Pike, High Street, and Ill Bell—quite the roll call. Kirkstone Pass, that lofty col between Ambleside and Patterdale, lent its name to an inn that once basked in the…
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Charles Gough’s Fatal Ascent and his Dog’s Vigil
It has been some time since I last dragged myself up Helvellyn via Striding Edge. Definitely before the pandemic chaos. This photograph, taken around midday, gazes slightly east of south. St. Sunday Crag and Fairfield flaunt a dusting of snow. A marvellous day: cloudless peaks, sub-zero temperatures, and a wind that was brisk enough to…
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A Rainbow Over Ruin: The Legacy of Great Rundale’s Baryte Mines
A rainbow graces the Pennine valley of Great Rundale, near Dufton—a charming touch to a landscape turned into an industrial graveyard. The old lead and barytes mines have left their mark: adits, crumbling shafts, stone hut ruins, and vast heaps of rocky waste. The track winding up the dale carries the faint memory of men…
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From Beak Hills to the Cotswolds: A Tale of Unequal Farming
Cringle Moor, as seen from Cold Moor across the eastern sweep of Raisdale. Below sits Beak Hills farm, your archetypal North York Moors operation. According to their website, they mostly breed sheep on 125 acres of valley pasture, with another 300 acres of shared grazing rights on Cold Moor. They have also embraced modern farming…
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Raisdale’s Constablewick and the Bones of Bert
This morning was cold, but not that cold. No puddles bore that brittle layer of “cat ice,” and the dead Bracken fronds remained frost-free. Compare that to last Saturday, when midnight brought a sultry 15°C, according to the car thermometer—a temperature fit for short sleeves. Earlier that day, as Storm Bert howled and hurled snow,…
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The Timeless Elegance of a Spray-Painted Phallus
This brilliant display of human ingenuity—sprayed haphazardly onto the ancient rock face on Roseberry Topping—is truly a sight to behold. The “artist,” undoubtedly a revolutionary thinker of his age and who clearly imagines himself—undoubtedly masculine, of course—as the Teesside Banksy, has chosen this timeless canvas to bless us with his daring vision. The frantic scrawls…
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Bert: From a Cockney Chimney Sweep to Meteorological Menace
A seemingly harmless photo that utterly fails to capture the ferocious winds and horizontal sleet of Storm Bert. Truly, a day only a fool would choose for photography. Thus, the muted colours of this image of Roseberry Topping are my sole reward after braving the tempest. The image does, however, showcase the dry-stone wall that…
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Clouds over the North Sea
Ah, another crisp, cold morning with a blue sky. The sun, though, seemed to be having a leisurely lie-in. The reason all became clear atop Capt. Cook’s Monument. A bank of cumulus cloud hovered menacingly over the North Sea—not the friendly fair weather sort, mind you, but cumulus congestus, puffed up and self-important, like galleons…
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Ormesby Hall Stables: John Carr’s Work—or Just a Good Imitation?
Working at the National Trust’s Ormesby Hall on a bitterly cold morning—what a treat. The cupola perched atop the old stables, apparently inspired by a Tuscan temple, caught my eye. Its bird-shaped weather vane glinted smugly in the morning sun, set against a postcard-perfect blue sky and a lingering half-moon. The “Carr” Stables, as they…