Month: September 2016
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Red Stone
The rainbow portends a squall. It’s easy to forget winter is approaching. This boundary stone on Greenhow Moor looks 18th century, marking the limit of the Feversham Estate. Now is it the ‘Red Stone’ that’s marked on the 1857 Ordnance Survey map? The location is about right but this stone doesn’t look significant enough to warrant a…
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Transporter Bridge
A trip into Middlesbrough town and an opportunity to revisit once familiar places along the banks of the Tees. Much has changed, buildings demolished, waste ground landscaped, signposts for footpaths: the England Coast Walk and the Eight Bridges Walk. That’s a new one on me. But some things remain the same. The white horses on the river…
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Seave Green
Blue skies, an inquisitive bullock and the sandstone cottages of Seave Green, an hamlet in upper Bilsdale, make an idyllic scene. A scene which, if the Victorian speculators had had their way would have looked quite different. In 1874 a railway was proposed running down the valley through the fields on the far side of the beck. The railway was to…
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Rowan tree, Lonsdale Quarry
The striking red berries of the Rowan tree stand out against the drab Autumn colours of the moors. The Rowan or Mountain Ash has long been associated with superstition and folklore. In Greek myology the goddess of youth, Hebe, lost her cup of ambrosia, said to rejuvenate youth. It was stolen by demons and the gods sent…
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Urra Moor
A drab misty start to the week with rain threatening. The boundary stones across Urra Moor probably mark the limit of the Feversham estate. Bilsdale below is only just visible.
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Highcliff Nab
From Bousdale Wood, near Pinchinthorp. A sandstone crag overlooking the town of Guisborough. On the northern edge of the North York Moors and a popular climbing venue, first ‘discovered’ for climbing in the 1930s. There is a Mesolithic site just beyond the summit. The Nab must have made a fine lookout for the hunters over…
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Whorl Hill
At 237m above sea level Whorl Hill has the distinction of being the 1182nd tallest hill in England. Or so the tables say. It’s an outlier of the Cleveland Hills overlooking the deserted village of Whorlton. The plantation of larch that covers the hill was planted in 1953, the year of the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth…
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Eston Moor
I went up Eston Nab today. Took thirty children from a local primary school to look at the remains of the ironstone mines and on up to the Nab. To discover their local heritage. I felt ashamed. So much litter. Everywhere piles of plastic bottles. I counted seven burnt out cars. The paths through the woods have been…
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Blakey Topping
The story goes that a giant by the name of Wade had an argument with his wife and in a fit of temper he scooped by a handful of earth and threw it at her but missed creating Blakey Topping in the process. And the hole left became the Hole of Horcum. Elgee writing in the 1930s recounts a…
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Brambles
Autumn is rapidly setting in. It’s going to be a good year for Autumn colours. Unless we have storms blowing the turning leaves off. Some bramble leaves are a deep red yet others are still green. Maybe different species. There are plenty of them. 320 at the last count. Off the main drag up to Capt.…