Month: September 2018
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Mount Famine ridge
A pre-breakfast run with the dog. And overnight someone had opened a massive parasol of cloud. The blue skies of yesterday had gone along with any view of Kinder Scout. Mount Famine was familiar to me only as a race in the fell runners calendar. Too short to justify the journey south and too close…
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Kinder Downfall
The first time I saw the Kinder Downfall was by an approach from Edale on a wet winter’s day with a howling southwesterly wind. I was 14, trusting in a youth leader taking us across the notorious boy eating peat hags of Kinder Scout plateau. Somehow we made the Kinder Gates and followed the infant…
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Laddow Rocks
Ewan MacColl, in his Manchester Rambler, famously sang that he had slept upon Crowden. But Crowden seems to be the name of the hamlet at the foot of Crowden Brook. I can’t find a moor or hill named Crowden. Perhaps he meant Laddow Rocks, a range of gritstone crags overlooking Crowden Great Brook. When MacColl…
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Speed Breakers
Yorkshire Sculpture Park. A visit to the 80 odd sculptures set in 500 acres of lovely rolling parkland surrounding Bretton Hall near Barnsley. I was particularly inspired by this artist’s juxtaposition between mundane objects found in our everyday environment and the natural landscape of the beech woodland. The expected surface has been subtly altered, contradicting…
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Dale Head Bee Boles
Do other animals exhibit man’s craving for sweetness? I guess bears do, or at least Winnie the Pooh does. It is said that the refinement of sugar originated in the Indian subcontinent in prehistory. The Crusaders brought it back to Europe and but it wasn’t until the development of sugar plantations in the West Indies…
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Roseberry Sunset
Such a cracking sunset last night that I had another evening stroll. An online ephemeris tells me the sun will set at 269.4°, pretty close to due west. Not surprising when you think about it, just two days after the Autumn equinox. And it just so happens that Roseberry Topping is a smidgen off due…
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Seal Sands
The first site I worked on after moving to the area in 1973. The petrochemical complex was built on land “reclaimed” from inter-tidal mudflats much to the dismay of conservationists as the developments destroyed the rich habitat of the Tees estuary. The reclamation had been going on since industrial Teesside began. By the turn of…
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Danby Dale and Castleton
As the sun passes over the equator and the hours of daylight and darkness are the same, we are reminded that winter is fast approaching. So an equinoctial cycle ride, to Great Fryup for breakfast at the Yorkshire Cycle Hub, what better way of spending a Sunday morning. Unfortunately, at Rosedale Head, I got quite…
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South Skelton Ironstone Mine
Most buildings associated with the ironstone mines of East Cleveland have either long since been demolished or converted for industrial use. South Skelton Mine is the one exception because I suppose it went into agricultural use. The farm has now been abandoned and I understand the site is now earmarked for residential development. Operations began…
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Upper Ryedale
Compared to other moorland dales, such as Bilsdale, Farndale and Bransdale, the valley of the upper River Rye is relatively infertile. The river has not eroded through the sandstones to reveal the underlying shales and the broad fertile valley bottoms of these other dales are missing. Instead, there are rarely more than two fields either…