Category: Thompson’s Rigg
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Site of Blakey House
A lone gate post and some lumps and bumps mark the site of a long gone farmstead called Blakey House. The buildings must have been still extant pre-WW2 as is it recorded they were destroyed during military trainingfor that conflict. The age of the farmstead is given as ‘post medieval’ which could be anytime between…
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More Devil’s work
The devil works hard so they say, but he doesn’t seem to be very good at any of his whimsical, crackpot schemes. It’s said he took a dislike of Aldborough but his ‘Arrows’ fell short and only just missed striking Boroughbridge. Then there’s his grandiose scheme for dividing the North Sea which got no further…
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Blakey Topping
Some say it was the giant Wade that created Blakey Topping when he had a tiff with his wife, Bell, and threw lumps of earth at her as she ran across the moor. Where he scooped up the earth is now known as the Hole of Horcum. Of course, the geologists tell us it is…
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Is this a bee fly?
I have been told that this is a bee fly, a member of the Bombyliidae family but after looking at hundreds of pictures on the internet I am not so sure. There are 5,200 species of flies in the UK. I guess this one’s wingspan was about a centimetre and docile enough to enable me…
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Blakey Topping, viewed from the south-east
Viewed from Thompson’s Rigg, Blakey Topping looks almost conical. From the south-west, it’s a humpback hill. Supposedly built by the giant Wade after an argument with his wife. In a fit of temper, he scooped up a handful of earth, thereby creating the Hole of Horcum, and threw it at her but missed. Blakey Topping…