Out & About …

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

  • St Mary’s, Over Silton

    St Mary’s, Over Silton

    Sited in a shallow valley, half a mile from the village of Over Silton is the church of St. Mary. It dates to the 12th century and can only be approached only by a footpath. The original village that it served no longer exists, just a few lumps and bumps in the surrounding fields remaining, […]

  • Early riser

    Early riser

    Eighty minutes after a warm October dawn, although the sun had yet to make an appearance, a butterfly caught my eye. A flighty thing but after ten minutes of stalking I managed to grab this shot. Not the best specimen, it looks as though chunks are missing from the ends of its wings, but by […]

  • Mount Grace Priory

    Mount Grace Priory

    They’ve done a lot of tree felling around Mount Grace Priory, opening up new views of the ruined 14th-century Carthusian Priory. The monks lived in silent isolation, in cells around the two cloisters. To the right of the church is the larger cloister which incorporates sixteen cells. On the extreme right is a modern reconstruction […]

  • Grain Slack

    Grain Slack

    Discovered a new area of moorland today. Thompson’s Rigg, part of the National Trust’s Blakey Topping property. Heather dominates the rigg, hiding the prehistoric field system, cairnfield and hollow ways. Across Grain Slack, a diverse shallow valley is Allerston High Moor, also Trust land. In the distance, the commercial plantations of Langdale Forest have been […]

  • The Waterfall

    The Waterfall

    Great Ayton’s famous waterfall, although it’s really a weir. On the left-hand wall are the initials of Thomas Richardson who made a large donation to the weir’s construction in 1840. A water race ran all the way to Low Green providing power there for Richardson’s corn mill so a cynic might say the donation wasn’t […]

  • White Hill

    White Hill

    White Hill, or perhaps better known as Hasty Bank, although I think that name actually refers to the Bilsdale side. Anyway the site of the 1872 landslip which wiped out the old Stokesley to Bilsdale road. I won’t repeat the history here, just refer you to my earlier post. Looking down on the Cleveland plain […]

  • Crepuscular rays shining on Yarm

    Crepuscular rays shining on Yarm

    I’d banked on a good sunset but the rain came, should have read the forecast. Still somewhere was in the sun. Yarm I reckon. The wind farm is between Hilton and Seamer. Taken from the northwestern flank of Roseberry. Crepuscular comes from the Latin crepusculum, which means twilight, the time when these sun rays beaming […]

  • Lealholm Bridge

    Lealholm Bridge

    Early 19th-century stone bridge spanning the River Esk at the picturesque village of Lealholm. Grade II listed, it must have replaced an earlier bridge for The Board Inn on the opposite is a former coaching inn dating from 1742 when the building was known as Lealholm Bridge House. Open Space Web-Map builder Code

  • Zwartbles

    Zwartbles

    In a field near Stokesley, a flock of rare breed sheep. Brown with a white blaze on their heads and white socks. Google’s first suggestion was that they were Balwens, a Welsh Mountain breed but further down the page came Zwartbles. After much deliberation, this 19th-century Dutch breed seemed the more likely.

  • An undercliff, Great Fryup Dale

    An undercliff, Great Fryup Dale

    I posted a photo of Great Fryup Dale last year when I wrote about my fascination for an area at the head of the valley called The Hills. A chaotic jumble of knolls, ridges and depressions. The same question returned. What caused this landscape? Quarrying? Alum extraction? Canon J.C. Atkinson, the vicar of Danby, also […]

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