Month: September 2022
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Not the Queen’s funeral
Plenty of folks taking advantage of the extra bank holiday and preferring not to be glued to the telly watching wall-to-wall coverage of Her Majesty’s funeral. I notice the trig. point hasn’t escaped adornment by Elizabethan themed graffiti. Which places the National Trust with a bit of a dilemma: how long to leave it up.…
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Fryup Dale
Or more strictly, Great Fryup Dale, since the dale is generally said to comprise two parallel steep sided u-shaped valleys: Little and Great Fryup Dale, connected by a col, Fairy Cross Plain. Both dales are broad and flat with steep rims of scrub and patches of ancient deciduous woodland. In searching the history of the…
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The Farndale Hob
I realised the other day that I don’t know upper Farndale at all. I’ve skirted around the skyline on the Rudland Rigg or the track of the old mineral railway to Rosedale many, many times. I do remember crossing the dale once in the Cleveland Survival Race. But I can’t say I’ve ever been to…
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The British School
It’s rare to find a view in the village without parked cars. This is Great Ayton’s Discovery Centre, a community run library set up in 2013 if I recall, after the North Yorkshire County Council threatened the existing library with closure. The Union flag is at half-mast in respect of HM Queen Elizabeth II. The…
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Flashback to 1948: ‘Yorkshire dale to begin new life’
Bransdale Eastside and the farmsteads of Smout House (formerly Loft House and now the National Trust’s office and stores), Toad Hole, and Cow Sike. I came across an interesting article in the Yorkshire Post dated 27 November 1948, which gives a very good insight of what life was like in Bransdale in the first half…
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A view across Kildale to the side valley of Lonsdale.
In the right distance is ‘New Row’, a terrace of six single story cottages built by the Lonsdale Mining Company in 1865-7, and added to by six 2-story houses for the Whinstone miners. In front of New Row is the Kildale Sports Field, newly decked out for the forthcoming football season. In the late 1970s,…
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Powder House at Roseberry Mines
Had a wander down to the old Powder House to see how it’s faring. The pointing applied to conserve the gable wall facing Roseberry looks as though it’s doing its job. The rest of the stone walls, reduced to a few courses, are grassing over. The tramway down is a jungle of bracken. At this…
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The Green, St. John’s in the Vale
Mondays have always brought on a state of dysphoria after the euphoria of a weekend away. I think another post of St. John’s in the Vale is justified — a day late but heigh ho. The photo is taken looking south from Lad Knott overlooking the hamlet of ‘The Green‘, which, legend has it, was…
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Who was Jim?
Jim’s Fold, on the Eastern Fells below Calfhow Pike and overlooking St. John’s in the Vale. This was used as checkpoint on this year’s Lake District Mountain Trial. Taken on Saturday, the day before the event, when the fold was occupied by two wild fell ponies and their foals. But the question remains — just…
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Dunmail Raise
A view down Raise Beck to Dunmail Raise.