Category: Roseberry Topping
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Roseberry Topping looking splendid this morning
Just a couple of weeks ago, I heard a joke. It was not told to me specifically but to the handful of blokes I was with. It was not new, I’d heard it before, many years ago. I won’t repeat it but essentially it was playing on the assumed intelligence of our neighbours across the…
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COP26 continues and I am getting more confused about the statistics brandied about
We are told that, as a species, our activities emit 34 gigatonnes of CO² per year which would need around 68 million square kilometres of forest to ‘sequestrate’ — this is about half the planet’s land area, so a bit unrealistic. These numbers are vast. Gigatonnes. I can no more visualise a gigatonne than I…
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Flying on a wing and a prayer
Now that the COP26 UN Climate Change Conference is underway in Glasgow I was hoping to feature a photo that shows the effect of climate change on our North York Moors. But, unless you live in an area which has been subjected to flooding or fires, any effects are either incrementally small or subtle. Right…
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Roseberry from Larners Hill
A bank of cloud still smothers Little Roseberry while big brother is clear under blue skies. By the time I made my way around there, the cloud had dissipated. As something new, I thought about doing a somewhat arbitrary ‘on this day’ posting, so I pulled up the Daily Mail for 15th October fifty years…
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Recent rockfall, Roseberry
Spotted this morning, it must be fairly recent. Nothing untoward, just part of the natural weathering process. Imperceivable then suddenly … My first thought was that the enigmatic carved face of Roseberry was lying face-down but it’s actually on the lower crag. An odd carving, not exactly a Michelangelo but somehow quite intriguing. The big…
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Mine Rescue team
I came across a mine rescue team training on Roseberry today. An unreal sight, dressed in full PPE and carrying masks, helmets and oxygen packs, it must have been a very exhausting day for them. I assume this training in broad daylight is a preliminary exercise for kit familiarity. They belong to Triton Mines Rescue…
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A vote to ban ‘trail-hunting’ on National Trust land
Regular readers of this blog will know I volunteer for the National Trust on properties on the North York Moors. I do this principally to give something back to an organisation whose values I fully support. I am not fantastically enthused about old houses and gardens, it is conservation and the natural environment that interest…
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On this day in 1962 …
… mountaineers Chris Bonington and Ian Clough become the first Britons to conquer the north face of the Eiger. The 13,040 ft. climb took them two days and was one of the fastest ever. Within three hours of reaching the summit they were back in their hotel room. Here’s what the Guardian said in their…
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Bartle day
A dialect name for St. Bartholomew‘s Day, 24th August. A name that is preserved in the 19th-century poem by Captain John Harland ‘Reeth Bartle Fair’, a fair that was held at Reeth in Swaledale on St. Bartholomew’s Day. There are several weather related sayings for Bartle day: At St. Bartholomew, There comes cold dew. Which…
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Rosebay willow herb
Until the industrial revolution Chamerion angustifolium was a comparatively rare plant of woodland clearings and was often planted in gardens. Since then it has become the most successful coloniser of open land, embankments, waste grounds. I can remember the fluffy seeds being carried along in the draft of a thundering steam train. Each plant produces…