Out & About …

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

Tag: bank

  • Ash Bank

    Ash Bank

    The last time I used this track up to Highcliff Nab, was several winters ago, in the dark. It was then, as I’ve always remembered it, a quagmire, enclosed by tall forestry conifers. So it was quite surprising to find the bank clear-felled revealing a surprising view of Guisborough. And removed from the perpetual shade,…

  • Botton Head

    Botton Head

    I mentioned last week that I thought the heather was late coming into bloom this year. Well, the sunny spell has given it a spurt and it’s now getting there. Still not as intense as I remember though. This is taken from the old Rosedale mineral railway near to the top of the incline and…

  • “Love, and look after it!”

    “Love, and look after it!”

    I usually wake up to the Farming Today programme on Radio 4. On Saturdays, it is a bit of a compilation and 45 minutes later so I’m less philogrobolized than on a weekday. The first ten minutes or so this morning was about the trashing of the countryside that many of us have observed during…

  • Hasty Bank

    Hasty Bank

    It’s been at least 9 weeks since I last ran along the narrow path that contours around the back of White Hill, the south-facing bank at the head of Bilsdale. Clay Bank car park was fairly busy, I’ve seen it more so. But I hardly saw a soul on the hill. It’s good to be…

  • Ryston Bank

    Ryston Bank

    Why do new shoes feel so good? Maybe I keep the old ones too long. No studs left but the Kevlar uppers are still OK. So with a spring in my step from the new pair and a smattering of snow on the Cleveland Hills, I head up onto Little Roseberry. The fire alarm at…

  • Old gate posts, Halliday Slack

    Old gate posts, Halliday Slack

    A slack is a word frequently found in the names of the very upper tributaries of moorland becks. It’s a northern word for the marshy shallow area between two stretches of rising ground. Yet Halliday Slack is a steep, precipitous gorge in the escarpment of the Cleveland Hills between Kirby and Broughton Banks. Thirty metres…

  • White Hill and Haggs Gate

    White Hill and Haggs Gate

    Or perhaps better known nowadays as Hasty Bank and Clay Bank Top. Clay Bank Top is one of several low points along the Cleveland escarpment formed water overflowed from small meltwater lakes trapped between the scarp and the glacier covering the Cleveland plain and the Vale of Mowbray. Water flowed down Bilsdale and Ryedale into…

  • Roseberry and Black Bank

    Roseberry and Black Bank

    Odin’s hill from Ayton Bank. On the right is Little Roseberry with Black Bank almost clear-felled of its coniferous plantation. It’s barely ten years ago but I find it hard to remember what it was like. A tour of the escarpment on a glorious morning with blue skies. Lower down the fields are a bit…

  • Kirby Bank

    Kirby Bank

    Crossing Emerson’s fence on the climb up Kirby Bank from the Scout camp. I have already posted about the history of this fence before. A posting which although only from May this year, I had completely forgotten about. The fenceline was created as the result of a legal dispute in 1854 over potential ironstone mining…

  • Disused sandstone quarry, Easby Bank

    Disused sandstone quarry, Easby Bank

    I heard somewhere that there is evidence of twelve sandstone quarries along the escapement between Capt. Cook’s Monument and Roseberry Topping. The stone gained from these quarries would have been used for buildings in villages and farms down in the vale of Cleveland and for the miles of drystone walls that divide the moors. This…