Month: January 2026
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Beyond Apathy — Learning to Care Again
Appreciation of nature arrives like sunrise through a dark forest. What was once the shadow of youth becomes colour. Grass, rock, heather all minding their own business, doing it well. For the moment the world makes sense and you do too. You are small, but not spare. You fit. That is enough. Then, darkness returns.…
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Faith, Frugality, and Education: Ayton School in the 1840s
A dreich Sunday morning left the village unusually quiet—an ideal moment to post a piece that has been waiting patiently on the back burner for the right photo. Old buildings are silent witnesses to history. Their stones and timbers absorb human lives, ambitions, and compromises, even when those stories fade from memory. If we know…
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Hiding the Snowbones
I woke to a fresh cover of snow and a wall of fog. One lifted the spirits, the other did its level best to flatten them. Ten minutes after leaving the house and starting the climb up Roseberry, the sky had a change of heart and slowly thinned to an azure blue. The temperature inversion…
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Shelter in Stone — Bee Boles in Glaisdale
It is eleven years since I last walked this stretch of Glaisdale, and it is a quiet pleasure to find the bee boles still standing, having endured the long attrition of moorland winters. Even the ungainly stock fencing has earned its keep, discouraging sheep from testing their climbing skills. Bee boles are recesses built into…
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Newton-under-Roseberry and the Long View to the Tees
From the slopes of Roseberry Topping the view opens out like a well-thumbed map. Below sits Newton-under-Roseberry, neat and patient in the cold. It is a clear winter’s day, the sort that looks honest but bites hard. The eye moves easily from the hush of the village, across the chequerboard fields of Morton Carr, and…
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The Quiet Side of the Wainstones
Folklore has a habit of latching itself to a place, especially when the landscape looks as if it needs an explanation. A strange rock, an awkward slope, a stone where no stone ought to be, and the human mind gets to work, explaining things away with a story. Few landmarks on the North York Moors…
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Dredging Up Trouble on the Tees
The tanker Stolt Auk slips past a derelict wooden jetty at South Gare, heading for Rotterdam. The jetty is older than the Gare itself, built before 1888, and once served the North Riding (Fortress) Royal Engineers as part of the river’s coastal defences. It now stands abandoned, a relic of an industrial past that never…
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The Belt of Venus
I came across an article the other day about the Belt of Venus. It is one of those quiet marvels the sky puts on without fuss, turning up often enough, yet missed by most people because they are too busy staring straight at the sunset or sunrise like moths at a bulb. The trick is…
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Newton Wood and the Afterlife of a Dying Ash
Just after dawn, Newton Wood sits under a light dusting of snow. The sky is a hard, clear blue. Bare deciduous trees stretch their thin arms upward, as if hoping for better weather later. Left of centre stands a prominent ash tree. Its trunk is tall and thick, brutally pruned and cut short. It looks…
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Snow on Great Ayton Moor
Despite the cold and the driving snow, the figures about to pass on this path on Great Ayton Moor carry a quiet determination. The dog walker pushing into the headwind shows a calm determination, choosing fresh air and motion over comfort. His dog, meanwhile, remains happily unaware of the brief, restless drama of the falling…