Month: May 2019
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The Curlew
I’ve been wanting to snap a photo of a curlew for ages. They are the shyest of birds. I have seen them often on the moors but usually taking flight if I get any closer than 50m or so. This morning though I was cycling along a lane when I spotted one perched on a…
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Well Cottage, Park Square
An early ride out and a surprise to see Great Ayton empty of cars. Well, almost but an opportunity not to be missed. This is Park Square and was, before the time of a piped supply, the site of one of the village water pumps, known as the Old Grey Well. Villagers would come here…
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Woodpigeons
A pair of woodpigeons engaged in their nuptial courtship blissfully unaware of the current fury among the farming and shooting communities over whether they can be legally shot. According to the British Association for Shooting and Conservation, there are over 5 million breeding pairs of woodpigeon in the UK, a population increase of 134% between…
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Cockle Scar
There was a man out, a stranger to me, on a roan horse; I think he came out from Middlesbrough. I was hurrying down Roseberry by a steep track called Cat Trod and saw this man’s horse run away with him high up on the hill and take him at racing pace down the mountain…
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Bransdale
A lovely day in Bransdale. Bransdale’s walls are precarious features. Irregular sandstone boulders built in a single skin with more holes than a colander, yet this wall is shown on mid-19th-century maps but as a boundary between the moor and the richer fields of the dale, it might well be much, much older, first constructed…
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New artwork at Roseberry
Inspired by Leo Fitzmaurice’s installation at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, this artist prefers the anonymity in the style of Banksy. Here, he/she has captured a sense of clarity that is underpinned by a playful confusion, the essence of a mundane and familiar object in a way that makes us reconsider our assuming eyes. It is not…
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Siss Cross
Typical of the many crosses that are a feature of the North York Moors. Originally erected by the Saxons or Danes after their conversion to Christianity but most replaced over the years. Their purpose has been speculated as a waymarker, territorial boundary or a memorial but may have been re-used for all of these. Siss…
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Powder House, Belmont Ironstone Mine
The climb up Highcliff Nab from Hunter Hill Farm used to be one of my regular routes, but I rarely get that way much now, so I was surprised to see how much clear felling of Guisborough Wood has been done, with I guess more to follow. I remember this heavily reinforced concrete bunker being…
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The Lake, Studley Park
John Aislabie first began to create the landscaped gardens of Studley Park around 1716 but it was only after he retired from Parliament under dubious circumstances that he was able to devote fully to the task. During his time as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Aislabie guided the bill through the House of Commons whereby the…
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Confluence of the Ripon Canal with the River Ure
At the height of the boom of canal and later railway construction in the 18th and 19th centuries all railways and canals had to have its own Act of Parliament to ensure purchase of land and rights of way. Even the right to navigate rivers had to be the subject of an Act of Parliament.…