Out & About …

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

  • The Old Schoolroom, Bransdale

    The Old Schoolroom, Bransdale

    The former schoolhouse, now used as a community centre for the families of this isolated dale. In 1874, an old schoolmaster of Bransdale met an unfortunate end which caused an outrage in the dale, indeed it was headlined in the regional press as: THE OUTRAGE UPON AN OLD SCHOOL-MASTER AT BRANSDALE. The old schoolmaster was…

  • Mount Vittoria, Garfitt Gap and Hasty Bank

    Mount Vittoria, Garfitt Gap and Hasty Bank

    Today is the 200th anniversary of the death of Napoléon Bonaparte, aged 51, whilst in exile on the island of St Helena in the middle of the Atlantic. The autopsy concluded he died of stomach cancer, but some believe he was killed by arsenic poisoning. This may not have been as sinister as it sounds,…

  • The Friends School

    The Friends School

    The blossom on the stand of cherry trees in front of the old Friends’ School has survived the overnight gales. I’ve written about role of the The Friends School in assisting Jewish refugee children from Nazi controlled Europe before, In all, up to 1940, 32 children from Austria, Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary found a new…

  • Daffs on Little Roseberry

    Daffs on Little Roseberry

    I came across this little clump of daffodils on Little Roseberry. Way off the path. Curious to know how they got there. Seems an arbitrary place to have been planted. But how would the seeds have got up here? I have often wondered if our pre-historic ancestors climbed Roseberry. It must be assumed they did…

  • Lonsdale

    Lonsdale

    My memory is like a sieve. Only the day before yesterday, someone asked me when I had heard my first cuckoo this year. It was less than a week ago, yet I had to look it up on these posts. A bell rang somewhere but the details had gone. Even so I can remember exactly…

  • Mayday, Mayday, Mayday

    Mayday, Mayday, Mayday

    And we’re into May. From the Latin ‘Maius’, the Italic goddess, daughter of Faunus and wife of Vulcan. Mayday was a traditional day in Yorkshire farming practices when agricultural tenancies were changed, “the spring crops being likewise sown by the outgoing tenant, and valued with the wheat“, and “stock are turned into pasture grounds ……

  • Great Fryup Dale from above Raven Hill

    Great Fryup Dale from above Raven Hill

    Regular readers will have realised that my latest preoccupation is searching old newspaper archive for snippets of lost history. Great Fryup Dale seems to have been a very untroubled valley – free from murders or unfortunate accidents. But I did come across a report from the Daily Gazette For Middlesbrough, dated 9 June 1879, of…

  • Bransdale Church

    Bransdale Church

    It was pretty dreich this morning as we  crested Shaw Ridge and dropped into Bransdale. I can not remember the last time the church at the head of the dale could not be seen. It’s a lovely little church, which Pevsner says “must be c. 1800” yet according to the parish website it was built…

  • Bilsdale

    Bilsdale

    On me bike today. Passing through Bilsdale on the way to Hawnby I remembered this 18th-century song I came across the other day: The BILSDALE FARMER. THERE was an old Farmer in Bilsdale did dwell He had but one Daughter a beauty excell. And many caming a courting but all to her ruin. But still…

  • A lichen covered Highcliff Nab

    A lichen covered Highcliff Nab

    I’ve heard my first cuckoo of the year. Cuckoo – an echo of the bird’s call – an onomatopoeia. Words come and go. Some words are just made up – neologisms. Shakespeare was apt to make up words, so was John Milton. In 1667, Milton was blind and impoverished, and it was on this day…

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