Month: July 2020
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Turf Stone
On Bildsdale Moor West near Wether Hill. I haven’t been up here, certainly since lockdown. But not much to see as a blanket of wet cloud hung over the moor. Howes and boundary stones would provide photographic interest today. The Bilsdale Turf Stones are a series of eight stones, all inscribed with a ‘T’, 50…
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Scarth Nick
To me, this is one of most evocative features on the Cleveland Hills. It was the first landmark on my first visit to the North York Moors, on a crossing on the Lyke Wake Walk in June 1969. After descending the hill and crossing the cattle grid there was a sign saying “Ravenscar 39 Miles”;…
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Fireweed
The pinks of the Rosebay Willowherb are a common sight in summer but often overlooked. It’s a coloniser plant traditionally the first to grow after a fire, hence the folk name Fireweed. But it has not always so. The Georgians considered it quite a rarity and regarded it as a garden plant. Even as late…
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Park Nab
A sunny evening after a day of rain. This is one of a pair of blue fields flanking Green Gate Lane, better known as the Little Kildale road. The crop is Lacy phacelia or Blue tansy. The photograph has actually rendered the colour less blue than I remember. I am a bit disappointed. Must be…
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These Hills Are Ours: A Song for Roseberry Topping
Last year we attended a public meeting with Daniel Bye and Boff Whalley to discuss what Roseberry Topping means to the local community. Daniel is an Associate Artist at the ARC, Stockton-on-Tees and Boff is a musician and writer best known as a member of the band Chumbawamba and a fellow fell runner. We shared…
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Kepwick limestone quarry incline
The name of the old inn, Limekiln House, on the Hambleton Drovers’ Road, gives a clue to the industry which dominated the Tabular Hills escarpment above Kepwick. For it catered for the quarrymen as well as the drovers. Limestone has much used since pre-history as a building material, the Great Pyramid of Giza had facing…
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The Fairy Stones
The road east out of Hutton-le-Hole towards Lastingham crosses a bridge over Fairy Call Beck. Just north of the bridge are the Fairy Stones, a mosaic of stepping stones naturally formed from the Cornbrash bedrock. The Cornbrash Formation is a narrow Jurassic layer of rock, composed part limestone and part sandstone, that is rich in…
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Bracken bashing on Roseberry Common
A wet return to volunteering for the National Trust after the Coronavirus lockdown. A nice simple task to ease the rusty joints: bracken bashing, which also has the benefit of enforcing social distancing. The common was sprayed last year with a bracken specific herbicide so today was just keeping on top on any persistent fronds.…
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Site of an aerodrome
If you look on the O.S. 1:25,000 map of Carlton Moor you will see a large area of ‘white’ moor, land that is not designated as Access Land under the Countryside and Rights of Way Act (2000). Unfortunately, you can not get to this scale using my normal embedded map but here is a link…
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Hannah Coling Memorial
Over on the moors south of Scaling Dam Reservoir and I happened across this memorial to a woman who had died on the moor in 1848. H. COLING Perished here January 21st 27th 1848 I had heard there was a memorial somewhere on this moor but I wasn’t looking for it specifically. I found one…