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Loch an Eilein
The “Lake of the Island”. And on the island a castle. A castle that was unsuccessfully stormed by Jacobite troops in 1690. Long after that battle, ospreys nested there. King George V came, soon after his coronation in 1911, especially to view them. Apparently the loch was dammed to create artificial floods to float logs…
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St Helen’s Church, Aldcambus
On the road again. Heading north of the border, and stopped for a break. Spotted “St Helen’s Church (rems of)” in Gothic font on the map so an excuse for a run along the north Berwickshire coast. The church is considered to be early 12th-century. Dedicated to St. Helen, who was the mother of the…
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Bluebells in Cliff Rigg Wood
Another wet morning. The bluebells seem to be slow this year, although perhaps still a bit early. Cliff Rigg Wood is south facing so the flowers emerge earlier than in the north-west facing Newton Wood. These bluebells are in a gulley which is in a bowl at the south-east end of Cliff Rigg Wood known…
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Carlton Bank
I wrote just a few weeks ago about a farmer by the name of Joseph Hugill from Raisdale, who was attacked and robbed on his way home from Kirby. That was in 1892. 25 years earlier, another Hugill unfortunately died on his way home. A report in the Shields Daily Gazette, on the 12 Jan.…
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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…
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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,…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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 ……
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