Out & About …

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

Month: March 2021

  • Potters Ridge

    Potters Ridge

    I have not taken a photo from this spot before. Honest. I moved a hundred metres south from Black Nab to be sure. I have often wondered how Potters Ridge got its name. That low 25 metre high prominence behind Highcliff Nab. I think I’ve found out. In 1806, Robert Chaloner, the Lord of the…

  • Acklam Hall

    Acklam Hall

    Although this must be one of the oldest, if not the oldest, building in Middlesbrough, I didn’t get a sense of history while I was there. Too manicured and twee for me. A green plaque indicated a date of 1678 but major restoration in the mid-19th-century, and again in 1912 must have substantially altered its…

  • The Boulder

    The Boulder

    “I like that boulder. That is a nice boulder.” So said Donkey to Shrek. The climbing fraternity have dubbed this huge boulder below Ward Nab on Coate Moor as simply “The Boulder”. I feel sure it must at some time have had another name but it looks like that has been lost to history. A…

  • Resurfaced laid path to Roseberry

    Resurfaced laid path to Roseberry

    A brand spanking new path. The National Park has been hard at work upgrading the path between Aireyholme Cottage and Roseberry. Over the winter it had become impassable with a gluppy mud. The farmer had, a few years ago, with good intentions, enclosed the path to the statutory 1½ metre width for a field edge.…

  • Cook, Cats, Saints and Thieves

    Cook, Cats, Saints and Thieves

    Capt. Cook’s Monument, dedicated of course to Captain James Cook, that problematic “discoverer” of Australia, who lived as a boy in the village of Great Ayton. When he set out on the first of his three voyages to the south Pacific, his ship was the HMS Bark Endeavour, a Whitby built collier. She was a…

  • Mount Grace Priory

    Mount Grace Priory

    Most photos of Mount Grace Priory feature the late medieval Carthusian charterhouse.  The ruined church is an iconic image. The house is often overlooked. The former guest house of the monastery was converted into a private house in 1654 probably by Lord Darcy and substantially renovated and extended by Sir Issac Lowthian Bell about 1900. The…

  • A Sad and Shameful Case

    A Sad and Shameful Case

    A few posts ago I started to slip down a philosophical rabbit hole. Is the “right of property” one of the fundamental ‘evils’ in human society? Did we evolve to own property? I’ve kept thinking. Are there other constructs that may have been with us since we were hunting and gathering? Two come to mind…

  • On this day in 1933

    On this day in 1933

    “It was icy cold in Munich on New Year’s Day [1933]. Adolf Hitler was drinking coffee over breakfast at his luxurious apartment at 16 Prinzregentenplatz. The morning papers made gloomy reading about his political prospects in the coming year. A critical article in the social democratic newspaper Vorwärts headlined ‘Hitler’s Rise and Fall’ suggested the…

  • Dear Rishi Sunak,

    Dear Rishi Sunak,

    I am writing this open letter, as one of your constituents, to express my concern at some of the aspects of the introduction of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill 2021 which I believe has been deliberatively drafted as an excessively lengthy document (307 pages) and which is being rushed through the Commons on…

  • Hooton

    Hooton

    One of my regular runs during this latest lockdown has been from Pinchinthorpe Walkway back home to Great Ayton, so I have become fascinated by the ancient township of Hooton, or to use its modern name, Hutton.  So much so that the spline of the much thumbed book I have, “Two Ancient Townships – Studies…