Month: October 2018
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Stocking Crags Wood, Bransdale
A slow, misty drive over Rosedale Head. Past the Lion Inn, its solitary light pinpointing our position. Into lovely Stocking Crags Wood with its enrapturing colours and moss-covered boulders. Very autumnal. Cleaning up the bird boxes ready for next year’s tenants. Out with the old nest, just one tiny unhatched egg. And for the treecreepers…
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Chop Gate
Woe betides anyone who pronounces this village with a hard ‘g’, in the same way as your garden gate. As every Yorkshireman will tell you it’s Chop Yat which is a mix of etymological roots. The Yat is Old Norse for a road and Chop comes from the Old English ‘ceap‘ for an itinerant peddler.…
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A view from Turkey Nab across lower Kildale
Earlier this year, on January 29 a dead buzzard was found “on top of a dry-stone wall, next to a layby on the Kildale to Commondale road near Percy Rigg”. The RSPB and the police were informed and the bird was sent off for toxicology tests which came back in July saying the likely cause…
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East Rosedale old kilns
Lovely rich colours of the sandstone masonry of the old calcining kilns at East Rosedale, miraculously still standing after a century of abandonment. The inner linings of fire bricks look very precarious. An idea of the industrial scene in the 1920s can be seen in this old photo https://goo.gl/images/yALTvw although when it was taken the…
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The Charm Bracelet
I must admit I wasn’t too impressed when this appeared on the Cleveland Way between Saltburn and Skinningrove in the early 1990s but it has grown on me. Some youths in ’96 didn’t like it and they promptly hoyed it over the cliff. Or maybe they just did it for a laugh. I wonder what…
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Stebynthwayte
A wet stroll. A very wet stroll. First proper rain I’ve been caught out in for months. Headed over to Square Corner and into upper Ryedale. I had in mind to revisit a peculiar arrangement of standing stones at the old farmstead of High Cote. There are seven in this cluster including the prone one,…
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Plaque on the Levenside, Stokesley
I remember feeling very uneasy when I first read this plaque. And I feel just as uneasy today posting a photo of it. Is it too controversial, or am I just being over wary of offence? I googled Henty and found a Wikipedia page for the town of Henty in Victoria which says “The Henty…
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Moorsholm Docks
Right on the High Street of this delightful little village that just missed out on the ironstone mining activities of the rest of East Cleveland, is a row of six sunken sandstone water troughs that have become known as the Moorsholm Docks. Probably dating from the 19th-century they are fed by piped water from a…
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Cockayne
Bransdale is the home to 25 families of whom 9 make their living from farming. The largest community is Cockayne, at the head of the dale, but describing it as a hamlet might be overgenerous. A few houses and the simple church is there, dedicated to St. Nicholas. The datestone says 1886 but the architecual…
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Kirkby Bank
Kirkby Bank, the steep northern face of Cringle Moor giving a fine autumnal display of rich colours. The photo also shows well almost three hundred years of man’s activities. History is much older than that of course. The underlying rock is Jurassic, laid down between 150 and 200 million years ago when Yorkshire was on…