Month: August 2026
-
Penny Nab at Low Tide: A Hunt for a Lost Tramway
One from Sunday, when the tide finally allowed a proper wander along the scar below Penny Nab at Staithes, hunting for traces of a narrow gauge tramway that once skirted the base of the cliff at Jet Wyke, heading towards Old Nab. Whatever survives has spent two hundred years being battered twice daily by the…
-
Unmanaged Blaze on Hutton Moor
Experts love a crisis. Last year, the tiny heather beetle was going to end the world as we know it. They claimed the infestation had turned the moors into a massive tinderbox of kindling—they may well have been right. But they also predicted a grey, withered future for the purple foliage. They were a bit…
-
When the Sea Brought Fashion to Staithes
Storms wash up all sorts along this stretch of coast. Driftwood. Old rope. The odd sad welly. Coal—see my previous post. In October 1992 they washed up a different windfall. A forty foot shipping container broke loose from its vessel during a gale and settled below these cliffs at Hole Wyke, three miles from Staithes.…
-
Yorkshire Day and a Flag That Behaves Itself
Here we are, then. The World Cup finished weeks ago, the face paint is long gone, yet flags are still tie-wrapped to lamp-posts and hung from windows like a rash that will not clear up. During the football, everyone let it slide. Bunting, jolly, harmless. The tournament is over now, though, and flags remain, and…