Out & About …

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

Great Ayton Moor

There’s an old adageĀ that is saidĀ in all farming communities, from Scotland, to Wales and to Cumbria:

Where thereā€™s bracken thereā€™s gold;
where thereā€™s gorse thereā€™s silver;
where thereā€™s heather thereā€™s poverty

At first it’s hard to see the reasoning. Bracken is allelopathic, it produces toxins in the soil which prevents other plants from germinating. Hardly gold. But the sayingĀ actually refers to the underlying fertility of the soil, heather growing on the poorer acidic soils.

But for four weeks of the year the commonĀ heather, or ling,Ā produces a blanketĀ of purple. This is Great Ayton Moor with Capt.Cook’s Monument on the left and the Cleveland Hills in the distance.

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