Category: Guisborough
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Tocketts Ironstone Mine Ventilation Shaft
Hidden away on the steep wooded slopes of Tocketts Beck, a reminder of the Cleveland ironstone boom. A ventilation shaft with a tall, rather precarious looking chimney built to aid the updraft just above where a Public Footpath crosses the beck. The mine was a short-lived venture lasting for just nine years from 1880 although…
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The art of Kemplah Wood
I seized on an opportunity to be dropped off in Guisborough and run home and, as the weather was dire, decided to stick to the woods and go over my old training grounds. It’s almost thirty years since I lived in Guisborough but while the main forest tracks are the same much has changed under…
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Moorhen and chick
I don’t normally linger at ponds and wetlands. Usually, I’m too anxious to gain height onto the moors and fells. But I did dally a while at the small pond today at the Pinchinthorpe Walkway and was amazed at the amount of life there. This moorhen had two chicks, this one being fed by its…
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Xanthoria aureola
A splash of colour by the side of the Cleveland Way in the winter sunshine. Easily overlooked but deserving a closer inspection. Lichens fascinate me but I admit I am lost when it comes to naming and hesitate to put a name to this. Xanthoria aureola is a likely candidate, there are other contenders, same…
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Boulder, Potters Ridge
It always surprises me that this large flat boulder, on Potters Ridge around the back of Highcliff Nab is not named on any map. It is certainly significant and its location on a high point on the North York Moors escarpment only slightly lower than surrounding tops would have been a natural draw for prehistoric…
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Guisborough at night
A walk up to Highcliff Nab, looking down on a twinkling Guisborough. A sign of the season, lines of deep blue, the most disagreeable colour for Christmas lights, decorating eaves of houses. Top left, a row of red lights: the wind farm off Redcar, flickering as the blades rotate. A few ships out in the…
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Belman Bank Quarry
Recent tree felling in Guisborough Woods, ok maybe not that recent, might be a couple of years now, have exposed the outline of the large alum quarry at Belman Bank south of Guisborough. For many years any evidence of the quarry has been lost under the canopy of commercial forestry. A couple of weeks ago…
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Alum Rock Quarry
Another fine day in the Cleveland Hills. This is the view that will greet walkers on the Cleveland Way as they begin the steep descend around the huge bowl of Alum Rock Quarry into Slapewath. It could be said that here was the start of Teesside chemical industry for at the turn of the 17th-century…
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Ruthergate
One for the Guisborians, Ruthergate, an ancient trackway heading south out of Guisborough, diagonally climbing Kemplah Bank up onto Hill Plains and the high moors beyond. For the past half century or so the deep hollow way of the track has been hidden by forestry but dog walkers and mountain bikes have returned following recent clear felling.…
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Hutton Hall
Only appreciated in its wooded grounds from this height on Kemplah Bank. Sir Joseph Whitwell Pease, Bart, M.P., had Hutton Hall built as his country pile in 1866 which even included its own private railway station on the North Eastern Railway at Hutton Gate. The Pease money came from the railways, coal and iron, built…