Out & About …

… on the North York Moors, or wherever I happen to be.

Category: Garfitt Gap

  • From Drainage to Divination: The Cheshire Stone’s Secrets

    From Drainage to Divination: The Cheshire Stone’s Secrets

    I recently stumbled upon the theory that a stone – the Cheshire, or perhaps the Cheddar Stone as some insist on calling it – perched on on the edge of Urra Moor, has a natural basin which has been carefully modified in prehistoric times by the addition of a notch to channel the water outflow…

  • Morning Sun on Cold Moor

    Morning Sun on Cold Moor

    A panorama of Cold Moor from the vantage point of the Wainstones; to the right, the col known as Garfit Gap. What caught my eye in this view is the way the morning sun, hanging low, highlights the remains of the old jet mining drifts. These drift entrances, now long collapsed, appear as V-shaped scars…

  • Cheese, Stones, and a Summer Solstice Alignment

    Cheese, Stones, and a Summer Solstice Alignment

    I’ve been diving back into that book, “Rock Art and Ritual,” the one I got off eBay a few weeks back. It’s been giving me the itch to go revisit some of the out of the way nooks and crannies on the North York Moors. So today, I took a little jaunt around Urra Moor,…

  • Prehistoric Rock Art at Garfit Gap

    Prehistoric Rock Art at Garfit Gap

    Garfit Gap, that well-known col on the Cleveland Way nestling between Cold Moor and the Wainstones, is one of the four natural routes climbing up from the Cleveland Plain, southward over the barrier of Cleveland Hills into Bilsdale. Each route involves a formidable climb. Nowadays, though, the Clay Bank route, aided and abetted by the…

  • A chilly view across Garfit Gap to Hasty Bank

    A chilly view across Garfit Gap to Hasty Bank

    Right of centre is Whingroves, a farm which appears to have evolved into industrial pheasant rearing. However, in 1896 it was  a typical mixed farm run by Isaac Garbutt, a surname that has been on the Bilsdale parish register since the 16th century. That year, Isaac’s wife Mary gave birth to a boy who was…

  • On this day in 1933

    On this day in 1933

    “It was icy cold in Munich on New Year’s Day [1933]. Adolf Hitler was drinking coffee over breakfast at his luxurious apartment at 16 Prinzregentenplatz. The morning papers made gloomy reading about his political prospects in the coming year. A critical article in the social democratic newspaper Vorwärts headlined ‘Hitler’s Rise and Fall’ suggested the…

  • Do you want the good news or the bad news?

    Do you want the good news or the bad news?

    I’ll start with the good. Yesterday the Government announced that “Legislation will be brought forward to prevent the burning of heather and other vegetation on protected blanket bog habitats“. This is great news. A recognition at long last that the burning of heather moorlands is detrimental to their peat structure and their natural habitats. Burning…

  • The Bilsdale Bombardier

    The Bilsdale Bombardier

    A view down Garfit Gap and into Bilsdale. The farm in the centre is Whingroves, which seems to have diversified into an industrial pheasant rearing farm. In 1896 though it would have been a typical North York Moors dales mixed farm, run by Isaac Garbutt, a family name that has been recorded in the Bilsdale…

  • Garfit Gap

    Garfit Gap

    Popped up Hasty Bank and Cold Moor for an amble around. A pleasant morning, loads of walkers on the Cleveland Way. This is Garfit Buttress, the south-western end of the outcrop of sandstone crags known as the Wainstones. Overlooking Garfit Gap towards Cold Moor. A view I’ve looked at many times, yet fresh every time.…

  • Cold Moor from The Wainstones

    Cold Moor from The Wainstones

    One of my main sources of knowledge and inspiration is Frank Elgee’s 1912 book The Moorlands of North Eastern Yorkshire. Elgee was born in 1880 and was a distinguished writer of the geology, archaeology and natural history of the North York Moors. Largely self-taught, he was the curator of the Dorman Museum in Middlesbrough from…