Tag: dale
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Raisdale
Looking down Raisdale from the back of Cringle Moor. The plan was to descend to the farm, High Clay (left of centre in the photo) and pick up the Public Footpath but the bracken proved uninviting. One thing that I hadn’t realised before and evident in this photo by the spoil heap (right of centre)…
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Farndale
I haven’t really had much to do with upper Farndale. I’ve used the old mineral railway track many times, Rudland Rigg on the far side less so, but actually being in the upper dale, I can only think of a couple of occasions, crossing it directly. There are no footpaths along the dale. Of course,…
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Bransdale – Eastside
Bransdale is a idyllic community of scattered farmsteads. It seems to have always been the case. Eastside and Westside were once two separate townships belonging to two separate parishes before they were merge into Bransdale-cum-Farndale in 1873. You would have thought that crime would have been a rare occurrence in this remote dale, but in…
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Mount Vittoria, Garfitt Gap and Hasty Bank
Today is the 200th anniversary of the death of Napoléon Bonaparte, aged 51, whilst in exile on the island of St Helena in the middle of the Atlantic. The autopsy concluded he died of stomach cancer, but some believe he was killed by arsenic poisoning. This may not have been as sinister as it sounds,…
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Lonsdale
My memory is like a sieve. Only the day before yesterday, someone asked me when I had heard my first cuckoo this year. It was less than a week ago, yet I had to look it up on these posts. A bell rang somewhere but the details had gone. Even so I can remember exactly…
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Great Fryup Dale from above Raven Hill
Regular readers will have realised that my latest preoccupation is searching old newspaper archive for snippets of lost history. Great Fryup Dale seems to have been a very untroubled valley – free from murders or unfortunate accidents. But I did come across a report from the Daily Gazette For Middlesbrough, dated 9 June 1879, of…
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Bilsdale
On me bike today. Passing through Bilsdale on the way to Hawnby I remembered this 18th-century song I came across the other day: The BILSDALE FARMER. THERE was an old Farmer in Bilsdale did dwell He had but one Daughter a beauty excell. And many caming a courting but all to her ruin. But still…
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Hock-Monday
Today, the Monday after Easter is Hocktide, (or more specifically the Monday and Tuesday after Easter), and was a traditional medieval festival where games and sports took place, or there would be ‘hocking‘. This was a custom where the women would capture men and only release them on payment of a ransom, which went to…
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Ruffianly Attack on a Farmer
I just love it on those days when I awake without a clue, metaphorically speaking, of where I’m going and end up down the proverbially rabbit hole. An opportunity today for a one way trip from the Lords’ Stone (or the Lord’s Stones as the café has been called) to Clay Bank via Raisdale. This…
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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…