Out & About …

… on the North York Moors, or wherever I happen to be.

Month: June 2020

  • 30 June 1934, the Night of the Long Knives

    30 June 1934, the Night of the Long Knives

    Strong winds and a threat of rain were keeping folks away from Roseberry this morning. I’ve gotten in the habit of avoiding the summit if crowded, so this was my first visit for a week or so. When this is posted, it’ll be 86 years since the leaders of the SA, the Nazi Party’s paramilitary…

  • Red Barn

    Red Barn

    In 1678, long-held Protestant hostility towards Catholicism was re-ignited by the Popish Plot which alleged a Catholic conspiracy to assassinate King Charles II. Panic gripped the country. Anyone suspected of being Catholic was driven out of London and forbidden to be within ten miles of the city. In November that year, the House of Commons…

  • It’s looking a bit black over Bill’s mother’s

    It’s looking a bit black over Bill’s mother’s

    An East Midlands expression that came back to me on Potter’s Ridge, a small hill that has Highcliffe Nab on its northwestern end. A few moments later the first drops of rain arrived. And don’t ask who Bill was, ’cause I never found out. On strange phrases, I learnt a new word today – ‘quockerwodger’…

  • Hedge Bedstraw

    Hedge Bedstraw

    I thought at first someone had placed this posy of flowers in the top of the one metre high Tuley tube, but after much deliberation, the family conclusion is that it’s Hedge Bedstraw (Galium mollugo), a herbaceous annual of the same family of plants that gives us the sticky weed or cleavers, those long straggling…

  • The Sea-Man of Skinningrove

    The Sea-Man of Skinningrove

    Skinningrove again. Second day in the row. The cool sea breeze was so refreshing after heat of the day. I was reminded of a tale I once read about when the fishermen of Skinningrove found a merman or sea-man on the shingle beach, which would put it below Hummersea Point, the cliff opposite in the…

  • Cattersty Sands, Skinningrove

    Cattersty Sands, Skinningrove

    When I first came to the North-East in the 70s, I worked on the fabrication yards on the Tees. Well actually I worked in the offices but I had to regularly go on site. One of the pleasanter nicknames for incomers from East Cleveland was a ‘Grover’. This I found out later meant someone who…

  • Lonsdale Slack

    Lonsdale Slack

    The dog found a new pool in Lonsdale. A welcome relief for a black dog from the morning’s sun. Well, three pools actually, in Lonsdale Slack, a tributary of the River Leven. Presumably created as a wildlife habitat. Forestry felling work is ongoing so it’s pleasing that time and money have gone into this project.…

  • Old railway bridge at Swainby Ellers

    Old railway bridge at Swainby Ellers

    The fern that has found a home on the stonework of this old railway bridge first caught my eye. Now I could confidently write it’s a Lady Fern but that would be just a sheer guess. Ferns are notoriously difficult to identify, and it would take some climbing ability for a closer look. An ability…

  • “The finest view in England”

    “The finest view in England”

    It was a tad wet and misty this morning at Sutton Bank. “The finest view in England” according to local author James Alfred Wight (1916 – 1995) was not much of a view. Wight is more widely known by his pen name James Herriot. With no photos in the bag for today’s featured image, I…

  • Summer Solstice Sunrise

    Summer Solstice Sunrise

    Up before the crack of dawn to catch the sunrise on the longest day of the year. Who needs to go to Stonehenge? In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII introduced his new calendar, but, in what now could be seen as Euro-scepticism of yore, it wasn’t until 1752 that England finally adopted it, bringing us into…