Category: Great Ayton
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Aireyholme Lane
Aireyholme Farm from the south-eastern flank of Roseberry with the Cleveland Hills in the distance. The view is looking down Aireyholme Lane with the course of the old narrow-gauge tramway from the Roseberry Ironstone Mine to its left. Just before the tree, the tramway took a sharp right and headed across the fields to the…
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Wurzelweg
I keep a to-do list of words which I may find useful. I knew yesterday’s word was in it somewhere and it was while searching for that word that I came across another word that I had completely forgotten about. A word which, upon waking up to rain and low cloud, provided the inspiration for…
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Harlequin Ladybird
Found this wee beastie in the garden. A bishy barny bee as they say in Norfolk. But this is no ordinary ladybird, it’s a Harlequin ladybird, Harmonia axyridis, a voracious invader from Asia. Sometime in the 1980s farmers in the U.S. began introducing the Harlequin to North America to control the aphids that were feeding…
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Slacks Beck
I know a confluence is where two streams or rivers converge. The usual node in a river network. A meeting of waters. But what is a parting of waters called? Where a stream separates into two courses. I know of one, in the Lake District, Raise Beck above where it tumbles down to Dunmail Raise.…
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I’ve been running and exploring the local moors and woods since moving to Great Ayton in 1973
I thought I knew every nook and cranny but today I came across this brick structure on Ayton Bank. Quite chuffed, I feel I’ve made a major discovery. It looks like a water tank or cistern. There is a date scratched on the brickwork of 1952 but I think that is just graffiti. More likely…
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James Cook Memorial Garden
On 25 May, 1769, James Cook wrote in his journal “Most part of these 24 hours Clowdy with frequent Showers of rain”. Pretty much like the weather this morning in his home village of Great Ayton then, if a tad warmer. Cook’s ship the Endeavour was moored offshore Tahiti in preparation for his task of…
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Well Cottage, Park Square
An early ride out and a surprise to see Great Ayton empty of cars. Well, almost but an opportunity not to be missed. This is Park Square and was, before the time of a piped supply, the site of one of the village water pumps, known as the Old Grey Well. Villagers would come here…
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I wandered lonely as a cloud …
… That floats on high o’er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host of golden dandelions; Apologies to William Wordsworth and I must admit the rhyming doesn’t work but to me, the profusion of dandelions on roadside verges at this time of the year is just as good as…
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Great Ayton from Cliff Rigg
An early wander with the dog up Cliff Rigg. Fog creeping up from the Tees Valley, its duvet not quite reaching the village. In an hour’s time, there’ll be sufficient heat in the sun for it to dissipate. Open Space Web-Map builder Code
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Wood Field, Great Ayton
In the early 17th-century, agriculture in Great Ayton followed the ancient open-field system where the cultivated land of the parish was divided into many long narrow furlongs and sub-divided again into strips. This was all manorial land and those villagers who were tenants or serfs farmed several dozen of these unfenced strips scattered throughout the…