Out & About …

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

Tag: wood

  • Cliff Rigg and Newton Wood

    Cliff Rigg and Newton Wood

    Explored a long-forgotten section of a Public Bridleway up Roseberry Topping that has recently been cleared of bracken. It’s just a wild guess but to me, the route points to an early tourist route up to the summit. I’ve posted about this before. It starts in Newton and goes up Roseberry Lane (or Wood Land…

  • Word of the day: tropism

    Word of the day: tropism

    From the Greek tropos meaning “a turning”, a tropism is the response in a plant’s growth due to an external environmental stimulus. There are many types, such as: Hydrotropism, growth in response to water for example when the roots grow towards areas of higher moisture Phototropism, in response to light Thermotropism, in response to temperature…

  • Waldeinsamkeit

    Waldeinsamkeit

    A few days ago there was a posting on the village FaceBook page about a new “mindfulness” group being set up. When I enjoy the quiet tranquillity of the woods and moors that are right on our doorstep I find that I’m just a bit sceptical of the desire to find contemplation and peacefulness in…

  • Sowerdale

    Sowerdale

    I read in the proceedings of the Cleveland Naturalists’ Field Club 1903-1904 a hypothesis that at the time of the last ice age a lake existed in Kildale trapped by a great ice sheet, a thousand feet thick, flowing down the Tees valley from Stainmoor Gap. I was aware of such an ice lake in…

  • A morning jog in the snow is so exhilarating

    A morning jog in the snow is so exhilarating

    And following from yesterday’s pagan festival of Imbolc, today is 40 days after Christmas so it must be Candlemas, the Christian Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary. I don’t pretend to understand what that means but content with the quip that it is by now light enough to rise, pray and start…

  • Clain Wood

    Clain Wood

    You don’t see that many hangers of beech in North Yorkshire, its soils are too clayey. They don’t like getting their feet wet preferring dry alkaline soils like the chalk hills of Southern England. In the north, beech is considered a non-native species. The Cleveland Way and Coast to Coast footpaths go through this little…

  • Last of the evening sun, Newton Woods

    Last of the evening sun, Newton Woods

    There is something particularly nemophilic wandering through woodland at the end of a warm sultry day. Newton Wood has been designated ‘ancient woodland’. Officially it has existed for at least 400 years although it’s probably been here since time immemorial. It is hard to imagine the steep slopes ever having been cultivated or put to…

  • Wild garlic

    Wild garlic

    The favourites of the woods at this time of the year are undoubtedly the bluebells but lower down wild garlic carpets the damp sumps of Newton Wood. Also known as ramsons, the plant has long been used medicinally, usually in tonics made from the bulbs. It is widespread throughout Europe and Asia where the bulbs…

  • First snowdrop of the year

    First snowdrop of the year

    I saw my first Snowdrop today. In the wild that is, I had noticed some in the garden last weekend. This one was under the canopy the shade of an oak tree in what will be in a few months time a bracken-covered glade in Newton Wood at an altitude 200m asl. I suspect it’s…

  • Damaged walkway in Newton Wood

    Damaged walkway in Newton Wood

    Who did this then? A 500kg horse maybe?