Most of you know I am no admirer of memorials. Benches, plaques and carved rocks scatter the moors like litter. Yet this one is somewhat different, as if justified by age. Hidden off the main paths above Greenhow Botton since 1972, I had no idea it existed until I came across it, a few years ago now. At first sight I thought it a just shooting butt, but the circular dry stone wall carried a metal plaque: “Erected by friends to the memory of Mitchell Atkinson, a lover of wild places. Died April 1972 RIP Hull.” Considering how few loose stones lie about on this moor, raising such a wall must have taken some effort. I only hope the builders did not plunder the prehistoric burial mound on Round Hill, the highest point on the North York Moors.
Others have wondered about Mitchell Atkinson. Tom Scott Burns even appealed for information through the Hull Daily Mail, speculating on some family link to Canon John Christopher Atkinson of Danby1Hull Daily Mail – 17 October 1990. Moors puzzle. https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0003600/19901017/026/0026. That seems unlikely.
I do not know if Burns uncovered the answer, but modern searching produced more than speculation. A 1966 article in the Hull Daily Mail describes a winter crossing of the forty-mile Lyke Wake Walk from Osmotherley to Ravenscar by a Mitchell Atkinson, aged fifty-five2Hull Daily Mail – 17 December 1966. WONDERFUL NIGHT ON LYKE WALK. By JOHN HUMBER. https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000324/19661217/004/0004. Hard to dismiss as coincidence.
His first attempt, in December that year, failed after twenty miles in a blizzard. Two weeks later he tried again and succeeded, finishing in seventeen hours. He described it as “profoundly moving. The moor sparkled under a mantle of frost, the night sky was crystal clear and every star could be seen.”
He felt the stars hanging just above his head and likened his journey to that of the Magi travelling to Bethlehem. A biting north-west wind drove him on, and the reflected lights of Middlesbrough lit the frozen moor so well that he put away his torch. Frost thickened the pools with ice an inch deep, yet he kept warm throughout and ended his crossing beneath blue skies and sun.
Atkinson had already complete the Lyke Wake Walk six times in six months earlier that year, always alone and unsupported. Bill Cowley recorded the feat in his guidebook3Cowley, Bill. Lyke Wake Walk: Forty Miles across the North YorkshireMoors. Page 74. THE DALESMAN PUBLISHING COMPANY LTD, 1967 (first edition, 1959). Atkinson always travelled to the start by motorcycle, returning by bus.
This circle of stones above Greenhow Botton reminds us of one man who found meaning in these moors, but it also raises a wider truth: not every lover of wild places will be marked in stone or metal. Most who walk here will have no memorial but their friends’ memories of their journeys together. Mitchell Atkinson was given a plaque; others are remembered only by the heather, the wind, and the vast silence of the hills.
- 1Hull Daily Mail – 17 October 1990. Moors puzzle. https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0003600/19901017/026/0026
- 2Hull Daily Mail – 17 December 1966. WONDERFUL NIGHT ON LYKE WALK. By JOHN HUMBER. https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000324/19661217/004/0004
- 3Cowley, Bill. Lyke Wake Walk: Forty Miles across the North YorkshireMoors. Page 74. THE DALESMAN PUBLISHING COMPANY LTD, 1967 (first edition, 1959)
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