Out & About …

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

Tag: boulder

  • The Cloven Stone

    The Cloven Stone

    On Mungrisedale Common, the north side of Blencathra. In the distance Back o’ Skiddaw with Skiddaw House just below the cloud. This distinctive rock marked the boundary of the Lordship of Threlkeld, land that was claimed in the medieval times by the de Threlkeld family. Tenants had rights to graze their animals, cut wood and…

  • Greenhow Botton

    Greenhow Botton

    That deep embayment at their western extremity, Greenhow Botton, around which the moors attain their greatest elevation of nearly 1500 feet, is perhaps the most remarkable feature of the hills. The Botton lies almost a mile to the south of the line of the main range of uplands and has remarkably steep and precipitous sides…

  • The Elephant Stone

    The Elephant Stone

    Some wit referred to this as the Elephant Stone. I don’t know if that’s an “official” name but to me, it’s a complete misnomer. It looks nothing like an elephant and that is in spite of a strategically placed climbing hold as an eye, and some carved voracious teeth. Teeth, on an elephant! It can…

  • Dove Crag

    Dove Crag

    At 792 metres high Dove Crag is perhaps more famous for its climbing than as a mountain, a blip on the way to Fairfield but Dove Crag was actually the first fell that Wainwright wrote about. Seen here from a field near Hartsop Hall. The boulder is an erratic dumped by the retreating glaciers of…

  • Miller Moss

    Miller Moss

    When the summer of 2018 began it was just an un-named nondescript knoll in the Northern Fells of the Lake District with a spot height on the Ordnance Survey map of 609m. At the end of the summer, it was a nondescript mountain of 610m. Entitling it to be classified as Nuttall, a listing of…

  • The Pudding Stone

    The Pudding Stone

    And so summer ends. Above the heavily scarred landscape of the Coppermines valley in Coniston is a small dry valley called the Boulder Valley on account of its numerous boulders, the largest of which is the Pudding Stone. A huge boulder that tumbled down millennia ago from the heights of Brim Fell. Some idea of…

  • The Cop Loaf

    The Cop Loaf

    Exploring the wooded hillside of Beacon Scar above Ingleby Arncliffe in search of the ruins of Coploaf Cottage. This is not shown on modern maps but appears on the Ordnance Survey 6″ 1857 edition. The site is now covered by forestry planting but the ruined walls are easy to trace and eventually, I stumbled upon…

  • Botton Head, site of a WW2 air crash

    Botton Head, site of a WW2 air crash

    Climbed Botton Head onto Greenhow Moor in search of the site of a WW2 air crash. On 21 October 1940 an Armstrong Whitworth Whitley Mk. V was returning to its base at RAF Linton on Ouse, just off the A19 north of York, from a raid on the Skoda factory in Czechoslovakia, crashing into the…

  • Boulder, Potters Ridge

    Boulder, Potters Ridge

    It always surprises me that this large flat boulder, on Potters Ridge around the back of Highcliff Nab is not named on any map. It is certainly significant and its location on a high point on the North York Moors escarpment only slightly lower than surrounding tops would have been a natural draw for prehistoric…

  • Highcliff Nab

    Highcliff Nab

    The heather is just about past its sell by date. A view east from Percy Rigg towards Highcliffe or Codhill Farm and Highcliff Nab.