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River Leven and the Hinmers Congregational Chapel
A few tentative steps down the village. With a heightened sense of awareness of, while not major obstacles, they are nevertheless unwelcome. Slippy rotting leaves, inconsiderate parking blocking half the pavement, dog crap, indeed the mere anxiety of a frisky dog even if on a lead. “He won’t hurt you”. A realisation of the problems…
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Cove Harbour
I guess I am incredibly lucky. Stopped off at Cove, a picturesque little harbour, just east of Dunbar. Nearing high tide the crashing waves were very tempting. I was leaning my elbows on the harbour wall when I took this. It was the last photo I took with my little Olympus camera. Just a small…
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Coquet Island
An RSPB reserve about 1½ km offshore at Amble. Apparently it’s home to a colony of Roseate Terns. In the 7th-century the monk Cuthbert, living as a hermit, met Ælfflæd, Abbess of Whitby here. The island’s isolation appealed to many later medieval hermits and became a Benedictine monastic cell linked to Tynemouth Priory. The tower…
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Durridge Bay
I must be something of a thalassophile at heart because I do enjoy running along the coast, even though memories of being helplessly seasick are so vivid. But then a beach is also the worst place to run. Time never passes. The beach at Durridge Bay on the Northumberland coast is a 7 mile stretch…
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Tripsdale
In Bransdale on a dull, damp morning installing some rabbit fencing for the National Trust. Digging a trench to bury some chicken wire. That’ll stop the rabbits burrowing under. Up to my ankles in mud. The rabbits would need some serious snorkelling equipment. All not very photogenic so here’s a picture from yesterday. Tripsdale viewed…
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Nab End Moor
It’s been a while since I popped into Tripsdale, a wonderful remote valley though a lack of paths and a dense covering of bracken made a crossing exhausting. There’s a lot of water around, becks are full. Mist clung in the valleys but blue skies broke out on the tops. This is Nab End Moor…
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Skinningrove’s Greatest Showman
With a theme of “Skinningrove’s Greatest Showman”, the final touches are being made to Skinningrove’s enormous bonfire. A tribute to a 19th-century local miner, Henry Cooper, “The Yorkshire Giant – Tallest Man in the World”, who travelled across America with P. T. Barnum’s Travelling Show. At eight and a half feet tall, Cooper was actually…
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A Snow Bunting arrives on Mischief Night
I spotted this little cutie on the top of Roseberry this morning. I think it’s a juvenile male Snow Bunting but I’m open to being told otherwise. Probably having a breather after its nocturnal migration from its Arctic breeding grounds. Usually seen in flocks so I guess this one has lost its mates en route.…
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Wheeldale
Wheeldale Beck, one of the upper tributaries of the Murk Esk, between Goathland and Wheeldale Moors. The house bottom left is Wheeldale Lodge, built at the turn of the 20th century as a gamekeeper’s house, probably James Patterson, who was the keeper to the Duchy of Lancaster when he “discovered” the nearby “Roman Road” in…
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Capt. Cook’s Monument
The 2nd of November. I have been wanting to take a trip to Otterington just south of Northallerton on this day for a few years now. But again it slipped my mind until too late to arrange. So a tenuous connection I’m afraid. In the distance of this photo of Capt. Cook’s Monument lies Middlesbrough…
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