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Paddy’s Hole
Out of the slag from Teesside’s blast furnaces Irish navvies built this small harbour at the mouth of the Tees. A refuge from the north-easterly winds. It’s a little community, but a sad, decaying community, where low tide exposes decades of discard and rotting boats that won’t ever float again. It’s also an unwelcoming place,…
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Rosedale Abbey
One of the honeypots of the Moors, Rosedale Abbey emerged as a planned village during the 19th-century with buildings in the Gothic style. Very little remains of the Cistercian nunnery from which the village takes its name, just an angle with two buttresses and a few steps of a spiral staircase. The expansion of the…
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Burns Night
Cleveland is a land of glacial outliers. Roseberry Topping, Freeborough Hill, Blakey Topping and, of course, Whorl Hill. Apparently, at a mere 237m high, it is the 2226th tallest hill in England, which I must admit I do find hard to believe. To the right of the hill are the ruins of Whorlton Castle which…
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Bridestone Griff
A slight covering of snow completely transforms the otherwise drab winter colours of Bridestones Moor. The is the upper reaches of Bridestone Griff. A griff is a North Yorkshire term for a deep, narrow valley, said to have formed by glacial melt-water, and sure enough, lower down, the glen does become steep but here, high…
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Greenhow Burton
A crisp cold magical morning to climb Roseberry. Fleeting breaks in the clouds allow the winter sun to reveal the frosty fields of Greenhow Bottom. Sometimes mapped as Greenhow Botton, the name derives from the Old Norse ‘botn‘ meaning a bottom or depth such as the innermost recesses of a dale. The oldest Ordnance Survey…
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Ingleby Manor
Quite a rare site. Seen from Turkey Nab, Ingleby Manor, basking in the winter sun, but come the summer this Grade II* listed house will be hidden by trees. The architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner describes it as “an interesting building, though much pulled about”. Parts date to its original construction in around 1580, when it…
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Cocky-bells and ickles
Some ickle icicles or ice-bugs, ice-licks, ice-daggles. And snipes, and cockle-bells, aquabobs, and clinkerbells. Northerners might prefer tankles, shuckles, or just ickles. Then there’s daggers, and cancervells, Cocky-bells, and dagglers too. And not forgetting glaze and rime. Open Space Web-Map builder Code
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Old Meggison
Usually, mornings are my best time of the day. Of late, however, my morning stroll has been in the damp and cold followed by an ever brightening day long after my post lunch torpor and sluggishness has set in. Another revisit today. Old Meggison, a lovely little waterfall on the River Leven in Kildale. It’s…
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Chambered Cairn, Great Ayton Moor
It was only when someone asked me over the Christmas holidays the whereabouts the chambered cairn on Great Ayton Moor, having failed to find it, I realised it had been a few years since I had last visited. So on a cold, damp, overcast morning, I figured it was as good a time as any…
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Roseberry Common
A glorious morning on Roseberry. The light overnight snow has highlighted the scars left by 19th century jet mining. The spoil still sterile after all these years. The hard black fossil of the Monkey Puzzle tree has been prized for jewellery since the Bronze Age but it was made fashionable by Queen Victoria after the…
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