Month: February 2018
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Blossom Pond, Hetton Lyons Country Park
Trying to navigate my way around Hetton Lyons Country Park using the 1922 6″ to the mile Ordnance Survey map. A lot has changed. The old surface workings of the Hetton Colliery. The heart of the colliery was to the south of the Durham, Elvet & Murton Branch railway, now a walkway/cycle path. An industrial…
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Public Bridleway through Coalmire Wood
This annoys me. Intimidating signs erected across a Public Right of Way, clearly shown as such on the O.S. maps and on the North York Moors National Park’s own mapping portal. I took the photo above at point A, and the one below, of a padlocked gate, at point B. Both maps indicate a Public Bridleway…
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Prehistoric linear boundary at the Bridestones
The National Trust’s second winter season of tree and scrub clearance of the prehistoric linear boundary at Bridestones is almost over. Tree felling stops in the spring and summer to avoid disturbance of nesting birds. Just remaining for this winter is to stack the brashings and logs to create wildlife refuges. The Bronze Age earthwork…
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Percy Cross
I’ve had my eye on this medieval wayside cross for some time but its position at the edge of a road verge is not very photogenic. Last night’s snowfall, however, has had the double effect of transforming the scene and highlighting the base of the cross known as Percy Cross. Although the shaft is missing…
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Ruin in Cliff Ridge Wood
Hidden in the dense undergrowth of Cliff Ridge Woods, this small ruin, with a footprint no bigger than a domestic garage, is inaccessible at the height of the summer. It has two internal “cupboards” and what could be a netty outside. Now it is tempting to assume the ruin is a relic of the whinstone…
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Cat Ice
On a puddle on Newton Moor, cat ice, ice so thin that a cat could just stand on it without it cracking. Not so a big black dog. Open Space Web-Map builder Code
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Church Way, Ainthorpe Rigg
I often find I visit a stretch of moor that I haven’t been to for years then, a short time later, I’m back on that very same moor. So it was today, I found myself back on Ainthorpe Rigg, and on the Old Hell Road, the old corpse road. This would have been the final…
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Red sky in the morning, sailors’ warning.
“Red sky at night, shepherds’ delight. Red sky in the morning, sailors’ warning.” So goes one version of the old saying based on generations of observations of farmers and seafarers. A saying that was first documented in the Bible although probably in use long before that. In Matthew (ch. 16 v. 2), When it is…
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Halfway up the Incline
The halfway gate, good fresh snow and blue skies. Magic. The mile-long incline, maximum gradient 1 in 4½, came into operation in 1861 to transport ore from the Rosedale Ironstone Mines. At the peak of ironstone production 1000-1500 tons was hauled down daily, operations continuing throughout the night. The incline was self acting, that is,…
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The Bones of Winter
Such a wonderful phrase for which I can not claim credit nor provide a quotation, it’s just one of those phrases which I’ve read and has stuck in my mind. And it certainly felt as though winter had been defleshed today on Eweing Knoll, Dromonby Bank. I’m on the jet miners track which contours Cringle…