Category: North York Moors

  • Hill Hill and the Art of Furtling

    Hill Hill and the Art of Furtling

    It was one of those charming so-called “lazy winds”—the sort that cannot be bothered to go around you and instead cuts straight through, ensuring you feel every bit of its bitter, bone-chilling embrace. Hardly the sort of day for a leisurely stroll around Kildale Moor, but, there I have been, engaged in the enthralling task…

  • Planting Trees While the Moors Burn

    Planting Trees While the Moors Burn

    An exhasting day in Bransdale planting broadleaf saplings in the recently clear-felled Bloworth Wood, which sits, predictably, on the catchment of Bloworth Slack. Digging the holes was not the real issue; it was scrambling over the 45-degree slopes, ditches, brashings, and tree stumps that made it a delight. This simple photograph of the dale therefore…

  • 4th February, 1921: Redundancies at Roseberry Ironstone Mine

    4th February, 1921: Redundancies at Roseberry Ironstone Mine

    His day began long before any sensible person would even consider waking. At 4:30 in the morning, he and his wife dragged themselves from their bed, greeted not by comfort but by the biting cold. The morning’s first ordeal was the outhouse—an unenviable journey in deep winter, where snow, ice, and the ever-present risk of…

  • A Wall, a Track, and Centuries of Erosion: Bransdale’s Legacy

    A Wall, a Track, and Centuries of Erosion: Bransdale’s Legacy

    Ah, the wonders of dry-stone walls. This one in Bransdale is quite remarkable, though to many an eye, it might be just a very large pile of stones. Compare it to the more modest wall on the other side of the track, then maybe you’ll be as impressed as I am. It is well-built, you…

  • A Red Grouse, the Civil War, and Pennyman‘s Delinquency

    A Red Grouse, the Civil War, and Pennyman‘s Delinquency

    This Red Grouse, clearly unimpressed by my presence, stood its ground clucking defiantly as I trudged up Easby Moor. Its red wattle gave away its gender, maybe it was trying to attract a mate. Back in the 17th century, grouse would not have been hunted to the same extent as today but still might have…

  • Slippery Paths and Roseberry’s Summerhouse

    Slippery Paths and Roseberry’s Summerhouse

    A supposedly “gentler” path to the top of Roseberry Topping winds up the southern side from the Summerhouse Field. After last night’s heavy rain, the path has become a veritable death trap, with these walkers wisely prefering the rough grass for better footing. Ascending it is manageable, but descending? Practically suicidal. Avoiding the path might…

  • The Cleveland Hills on a Myst-Hakel Morning

    The Cleveland Hills on a Myst-Hakel Morning

    I slogged up through the old whinstone quarry, staring at the ground, my thoughts elsewhere. I braced myself to find the usual rubbish left behind by quad bikers, as if the world is their personal skip. I could hear them active yesterday. The frost-covered, sterile earth stretched ahead, with the bikers’ berms and humps standing…

  • Burns Night: Tartan, Haggis, and a Global Legacy

    Burns Night: Tartan, Haggis, and a Global Legacy

    Ah, Burn’s Night, that annual spectacle of tartan-wrapped sentimentality when the Scots remind everyone of their heritage. Beyond haggis, neeps, and tatties, there is, of course, The Address itself: Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face, Great Chieftain o’ the Puddin-race! Perhaps not Robert Burns’s maximum opus for surely that superlative must go to ‘Auld Lang…

  • The Witch-Mare of Orra—A Forgotten Nightmare Myth

    The Witch-Mare of Orra—A Forgotten Nightmare Myth

    Ah, Urra—barely discernible through the oppressive cloud that choked my aimless trudge around the moor it so generously lends its name to. It is also the setting for the utterly enthralling tale of the Witch-Mare of Orra. A legend I have alluded to with tiresome frequency, though clearly without bothering to grasp its finer points.…

  • Cleopatra’s Needle and its Tenuous Connection to the North Riding

    Cleopatra’s Needle and its Tenuous Connection to the North Riding

    Let us journey back to this day, 21st January in 1878, to Gravesend, Kent. Imagine the children, thrilled to avoid school, lining the Thames estuary to witness the grand arrival of Cleopatra’s Needle. This 3,500-year-old, 224-ton, 21-metre-high granite obelisk had been towed from Alexandria to London in a cumbersome iron vessel shaped like a cylinder.…