Category: Great Ayton
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Ayton Banks Alum Works
A cold, overcast day. The fresh snow of the last few days has aged into a dirty wet surface. I found myself above Gribdale looking down on the heavily worked hillside of Cockshaw where the snow accentuated the contours of the Ayton Banks Alum Works that operated for a mere nine years in the latter…
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On Ayton Bank
The last day of February and I had had tentative thoughts of cycling into Middlesbrough to photograph the Newport Bridge for it was on this day in 1934 that the bridge was opened by the future King George VI. But more snow overnight put paid to that idea, so Plan B: head up on to…
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Ruin in Cliff Ridge Wood
Hidden in the dense undergrowth of Cliff Ridge Woods, this small ruin, with a footprint no bigger than a domestic garage, is inaccessible at the height of the summer. It has two internal “cupboards” and what could be a netty outside. Now it is tempting to assume the ruin is a relic of the whinstone…
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Super blue blood moon
“Super blue blood moon IS messing with your body – leaving men with weird dreams, women restless and everyone more hungry” so says that pinnacle of journalism, the Daily Mail. Well, it must be true then. The whole world seems to have gone hyper about this triple lunar event. Super because the moon is closest…
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The thaw begins
With the forecast expected to top 11ºc later today the thaw is well and truly underway leaving the tracks of Cliff Rigg Wood a lethal sheet of ice. Apparently, glocken is a Yorkshire term for the thaw, when the snow clears, a word derived from Old Norse. The modern Icelandic word glöggur, to become clear,…
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Feeding time at Airy Holme
A busy Sunday morning for the farmer at Aireyholme. Snow makes it difficult for stock to graze and these sheep are likely to be in lamb so it’s doubly important to provide a feed supplement which the farmer is doing by a spreader on the back of his quad choreographing the sheep like the Pied…
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Sunset on Cliff Rigg Quarry
Headed up to Cliff Rigg to view the sunset which sort of fizzled out. The ridge is part of the Cleveland Dyke and is a protrusion of very hard volcanic rock cutting through the surrounding older sedimentary rocks. Formed 58 million years ago from a volcano near the Isle of Mull, it outcrops in many…
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Motherly love
Motherly love Motherly love Forget about the brotherly and other-ly love Motherly love is just the thing for you You know your Mothers’ gonna love ya ’til ya don’t know what to do Frank Zappa From the Mother of Invention’s debut album. Not really my music but an apt quote for these heelin’ coos at…
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Daldinia concentrica
A dull and miserable day, so my eyes were drawn to the forest floor. I came across these turds on a log. Actually, I know them as coal fungus, excellent for use as tinder for lighting fires. The 1-2 inch hard balls need to be dried out and scrapings from the inside can then be…
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Oxbow pond near Holmes Bridge
Today is the winter solstice, the shortest day. From now we can look forward to longer days. On the River Leven, just upstream of Holmes Bridge is an oxbow lake, an old loop of the river. It had almost silted up but is now being used to re-flood when the river is high. Wattle fencing…