Out & About …

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

  • Commondale

    Commondale

    Most people associate Commondale with the small collection of houses centred around the Cleveland Inn at the bottom of Sand Hill Bank. But Commondale only really begins there and ends downstream at the confluence of Commondale Beck with the River Esk. A narrow, secluded dale, about 4km long. Cyclists using the bridleway between Foul Green…

  • Finally some sunshine

    Finally some sunshine

    A week dominated by weather fronts sweeping across the country and where the mornings have become distinctly more autumnal. Nice to have some sunshine and clarity this morning then. This is a view north by northeast from Hutton Moor over Guisborough towards Redcar and the North Sea. On the right is Beacon Moor and Errington…

  • River Leven, Little Ayton

    River Leven, Little Ayton

    “Sweet vale of Leven! how calm is thy stream, Gliding onwards in beauty like hour’s youngest dream.” Attributed to John Walker Ord by J. Fairfax-Blakeborough in Great Ayton, Stokesley & District, past and present, 1901. The bridge was built sometime in the late 19th-century by The Stockton Forge Makers of Stockton-on-Tees who produced castings and…

  • Blakey Topping

    Blakey Topping

    A rewarding day on Thompson’s Rigg with the constant backdrop of Blakey Topping. The task was to install water vole fencing along Crosscliff Beck. Now that is not fencing to keep the water voles in but to keep sheep out. Water voles are one of our rarest native mammals and have suffered a sharp decline…

  • Not another one!

    Not another one!

    I remembered today a painting my aunty had above her fireplace. It was of a blue lady and it was years later that I discovered that it was just a reproduction sold in its thousands in 1960s furniture shops. The painting was called the Chinese Girl, and apparently the original was sold for nearly £1…

  • Silver birch, Turkey Nab

    Silver birch, Turkey Nab

    Perhaps my favourite tree, one of the first trees to recolonise Britain after the ice sheets retreated. It is an opportunist tree, producing hundreds of windblown seeds that are quick to germinate and grow rapidly making it the bain of gamekeepers and foresters alike. Even the National Trust control the tree cover on their moorland…

  • Lagopus lagopus

    Lagopus lagopus

    Ah, the “glorious twelfth”. Nothing much happening on Urra Moor, the cloud was down this morning so I assume any shooting planned would have been cancelled in any case. So this little fella survives another day. I spotted him along Carr Ridge on the edge of the escarpment clucking away. But high on Urra Moor…

  • Ingleby Moor

    Ingleby Moor

    No excuse but another photo of the purple. It’s that time of the year. Have to make the most of it. The season does not last long. Had a pootle around the upper reaches of Baysdale. This is from the east side of Tidy Brown Hill, overlooking Black Beck, a tributary of Baysdale Beck. In…

  • The Summerhouse Field

    The Summerhouse Field

    A lazy day, tired after Lakeland exertions. I just managed to wander up with the dog to what the family calls the folly field but which the Tithe map of 1847 lists, perhaps not surprisingly, as the Summerhouse Field. By this time the summerhouse had been in existence for about seventy years. The map recorded…

  • Brundholme Lead Mine

    Brundholme Lead Mine

    Glenderaterra Beck, a tributary of the River Greta, flows between the massifs of Skiddaw and Blencathra. Waking up to rain and cloud covering the high fells, I explored the mine workings alongside the beck. The ruins tell of a history of hope, hardship and disappointment. Work first began at the Brundholme Mine in 1872 but…

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