Month: October 2018
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Miller Moss
When the summer of 2018 began it was just an un-named nondescript knoll in the Northern Fells of the Lake District with a spot height on the Ordnance Survey map of 609m. At the end of the summer, it was a nondescript mountain of 610m. Entitling it to be classified as Nuttall, a listing of…
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Fell Ponies, Ullswater
A Cumbrian Fell Pony grazes on the slopes of Moor Divock overlooking Ullswater in the Lake District. They are semi-wild, on the hills all year round. Someone “owns” them, they have a tag on their ears. Standing no more than 14 hands high, shaggy with long knotty manes, Fell Ponies are said to have originated…
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Clain Wood
You don’t see that many hangers of beech in North Yorkshire, its soils are too clayey. They don’t like getting their feet wet preferring dry alkaline soils like the chalk hills of Southern England. In the north, beech is considered a non-native species. The Cleveland Way and Coast to Coast footpaths go through this little…
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Stony Wicks Boundary Stone
A morning run up Scugdale and over to the Lords Stones, where I was to meet my wife. “Did you see the rainbow?”, she asked. Wanting to avoid pedantry I replied I had but I could have said: “no, but I saw a rainbow”. I took a photo of it and this is it. It…
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First snow of the winter
Whoopee. Woke up to falling snow. The first of the winter. And much more to come according to the Express. Their forecast is the coldest winter for years. Very dire, El Nino’s fault apparently. The photo is on Roseberry Common looking up Little Roseberry. The snow was now sleet. Remembered my hat, remembered my gloves…
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Osmotherley
Pevsner, writing in the 1960s, describes Osmotherley as a small town rather than a village. In the second decade of the twenty-first century, it is undoubtedly a village which probably says more about the decline of village life than of the growth of towns like Northallerton and Stokesley. This view is from Limekiln Lane on…
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Bridestones Moor
The National Trust’s rare area of heather moorland just north of Dalby Forest. Rare because it is not intensively managed unlike most of the rest of heather moorlands on the North York Moors which are managed for one purpose only, that is to maximise the breeding of grouse for shooting, in spite of having the…
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Hunter’s Moon rising over Roseberry
Another full moon, the second since the Autumn equinox, traditionally known on the Hunter’s Moon because at this time of the lunar year the moon rises just 30 minutes later than the day before. Normally the average is 50 minutes. In effect making the evenings lighter which makes the hunter’s (or poacher’s) job easier. It…
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A crepuscular stroll on Great Ayton Moor
Another glorious Autumn day. Soon to change by the end of the week though. A north wind is forecast, and when that doth blow… But for now, the evening closes. The sun has sunk below the western horizon. The sky darkens. Where is Hesperus? Plenty of folks still out on the moor, on their vespertine…
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Head House, Arnsgill
Once the third and highest farmstead in this long thin valley, over 2 miles from the Osmotherley to Hawnby road. Enclosed by the Scotgrave and Cow ridges the valley’s uncultivated fields somehow escaped Open Access designation so the only way to cross is by the Public Footpath along the track up to Head House. Public…