Out & About …

… on the North York Moors, or wherever I happen to be.

Category: North York Moors

  • Cock Howe

    Cock Howe

    A rouky run from the Lords’ Stone Cafe to Chop Gate via Noon Hill and Cock Howe. ‘Rouky‘ — listed in a dictionary of North Country dialect words as misty, damp, or foggy. I did initially type the word ‘claggy‘; for I have some recollection of hearing someone once using it to describe that familiar…

  • Flying on a wing and a prayer

    Flying on a wing and a prayer

    Now that the COP26 UN Climate Change Conference is underway in Glasgow I was hoping to feature a photo that shows the effect of climate change on our North York Moors. But, unless you live in an area which has been subjected to flooding or fires, any effects are either incrementally small or subtle. Right…

  • Gribdale

    Gribdale

    I’ve never really figured out where Gribdale begins and where it ends. There is no dale as such.  The col between Capt. Cook’s Monument and Great Ayton Moor is known as Gribdale Gate. Beyond that, we’re into Lonsdale, so Gribdale must lie this side. But there is no valley. A stream does spring out from…

  • Kildale and St. Cuthbert’s Coffin

    Kildale and St. Cuthbert’s Coffin

    I delayed going out this morning because of the dismal weather. It was still raining when I left the house at 12:00 but by the time I crossed the River Leven at the other end of the village the sun was out. I discovered something about Kildale the other day, although when you think about…

  • Osmotherley Cross and Barter Table

    Osmotherley Cross and Barter Table

    The mornings have become more gloomier as October draws to a close, and an early start meant the honey pot that is Osmotherley was quiet. Sited next to the village cross is the unique Barter Table, a large flat sandstone on chunky legs. It is thought to date from the 16th-century and was used as…

  • A view of Swainby from Scarth Nick …

    A view of Swainby from Scarth Nick …

    … but the point of interest is not the village of Swainby, nor the wooded Whorl Hill on the far right. It is the field visible in the between the gap in the treeline on the left. Or more specifically the isolated tree in that field. It is around about here that a stone coffin…

  • The Wishing Stone

    The Wishing Stone

    This has been on my to-do list since the spring after reading a blog post on the Arcanum web-site. It’s a large, deep, circular basin on a boulder on Ingleby Moor that is speculated to have be manmade and used for ritual purposes: the making of wishes or prayers, or curses and so on. As…

  • Making a mountain out of a mole-hill

    Making a mountain out of a mole-hill

    Cringle End, overlooking the tiny village of Kirkby. Or should that be Kirby? The name suggests some antiquity, ‘the farm by the church’, from the Old Scandinavian word for church kirkja, but the structure of the modern church is pretty much Georgian. That an earlier church did exist is without doubt. It was given by…

  • Ingleby Stone Quarry Company

    Ingleby Stone Quarry Company

    A wander from Bank foot on a bright sunny morning with clear views of the Cleveland Hills. This is from abandoned sandstone quarry on Greenhow, a quarry operated by the Ingleby Stone Quarry Company, the stone from which was lowered down to the Rosedale Railway by an incline known as Wren’s Incline. The flat basin…

  • Percy Cross Rigg

    Percy Cross Rigg

    These posts often result from a faint memory which I then spend an hour or so trying to verify or research further in the evening — it beats watching ‘Strictly …’. But then, every so often, I plunge head first down a rabbit hole after I’ve pressed the post button. Yesterday was a case in…