Category: North York Moors
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Airy Holme
A view from Roseberry Topping to Capt. Cook’s Monument across the great bowl of Airy Holme, Slacks Wood and Ayton Bank, just before a tremendous downpour. The National Trust boundary of Roseberry is the fence line in the foreground just before the bracken limit. Aireyholme Lane can just be made out crossing left to right.…
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Birk Dale
The upper end of Borrowby Dale which drains into the North Sea at Staithes. On old maps, it is Birk Dale, on modern Birch Dale. I prefer to use the old name. The high point on the coast in the distance is Beacon Hill between Staithes and Port Mulgrave. Hinderwell is the village on the…
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Lonsdale
There is a wonderful phrase in Hebridean Gaelic, rionnach maoimi, meaning literally a mackerel panic but used to refer to the shadows cast on a hillside by clouds moving across the sky on a windy day. I am sure there must be a kindred word for a shaft of sunlight falling on the ground through…
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The Cleveland Tontine
A view from Swinestye Hill across the Vale of Mowbray. The Cleveland Tontine Inn, bottom left at the junction of the A19 and A172 is officially the northeasternmost point of the vale which boundary heads arbitrarily in a northeasterly direction to Scotch Corner. To the south is the Vale of Mowbray, to the north the…
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Parasol Mushroom
A day spent up to my neck in bracken clearing the footpaths on Roseberry Topping so little opportunity for photography. I think this is a young Parasol Mushroom (Macrolepiota procera). Eventually, it will unfurl into, nor surprisingly, a parasol. It is reputed to be the best of the edible mushrooms but I have no confidence…
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Ewe Crag Beck
A run out from Danby to Sis Cross and back via Ewe Crag Beck, a deep long meandering valley. At its head it becomes Ewe Crag Slack where it is shallow, broad, and flat, forming a boggy col in the watershed. With “no stream worth mentioning” Frank Elgee suggests in his book The Moorlands of…
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Easington drinking fountain
On the busy A174, a neglected Grade II listed structure almost smothered by shrubbery. The listing says … “Drinking fountain and troughs, alongside road, dated 1873. Dressed sandstone. Lion mask water spout in trefoil-headed niche under ornamented gable with 3 roundels bearing initials: “M.L.C.”, “M.G.M.”, and “K.L.M.” Semicircular basin on foliate stem flanked by semicircular…
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Ramsdale Stone Circle
How many stones make a stone circle? These three standing stones on the appropriately named Standing Stones Rigg on Fylingdales Moor are known as the Ramsdale Stone Circle. Ramsdale being the name of a hamlet and a beck that eventually flows into the North Sea at Boggle Hole. It is not known if there were…
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Bracken spraying on Roseberry
Roseberry looks different. Striped by quad bike tracks spraying the bracken that infests the Common. Bracken is found worldwide and in Britain, it is particularly invasive especially on the acidic soils of our moorlands. It’s always been with us, a pioneer plant quickly establishing itself as prehistoric man cleared the ancient woodland. But bracken remained…
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Whorlton Moor
A lone walker crosses a sunny Whorlton Moor and heads towards dark ominous clouds in the east. He is probably on one of the two long distance footpaths which use this stretch of the moors, the Cleveland Way or the Coast to Coast, the latter an unofficial but very popular walk starting at St Bees…