Penrod Hill is a high point on Gisborough Moor, and a public footpath drops from it into Sleddale, a valley boxed in by moor on every side. The name comes from the old English word “slaed”, meaning a wide, flat valley. A lonely farmstead sits at the bottom, cut off from the rest of the world in that way only a good sheep farm ever manages.
The right of way never actually reaches the farm. It just gives up short, which makes the whole path a dead end nobody bothers with. Feet now barely touch it, and the ground shows it: no clear line, no worn track, nothing but heather minding its own business.
This standing stone would have been placed here to point travellers toward the farmstead, back when someone still thought that mattered. Fair enough, on a clear day. Drop a good northern haar over the moor, though, and this stone becomes about as useful as a chocolate teapot.
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