Out & About …

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

  • First day of the grouse shooting season

    First day of the grouse shooting season

    The first day of the grouse shooting season so I took in a circuit via Urra and Greenhow Moors in the hope I might come across a shoot. It is not the “Glorious 12th”, of course, that was yesterday but being a Sunday the start is postponed for a day unless you are in Scotland…

  • On Faceby Bank

    On Faceby Bank

    There’s only a week or two of the purple haze so I have to make the most of the heather, providing some colour on a wet morning when the horizon is lost to the mist. The view is down to Swainby with wooded Whorl Hill on the right. Open Space Web-Map builder Code

  • Vale of Cleveland

    Vale of Cleveland

    I haven’t been up to Capt. Cook’s Monument for a while. Blue skies with the bracken heavy from overnight rain. This view across the flat, fertile Vale of Cleveland is from an abandoned sandstone quarry on Easby Moor. In the distance are the Cleveland Hills; Turkey Nab is on the left. Open Space Web-Map builder…

  • The Children of Eskdale

    The Children of Eskdale

    Barry Cockcroft is perhaps best known for his highly acclaimed film “Too Long a Winter” about Hannah Hauxwell, who lived alone on a remote farm without electricity or running water in Baldersdale in the Pennines. He later made a film about five children growing up in the early 70s on a Great Fryup Dale farm.…

  • 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…

  • Saltburn Sands

    Saltburn Sands

    When Malcolm Campbell took his 350hp Sunbeam Grand Prix Blue Bird for a spin along Saltburn Sands on 17 June 1922 he reached 138.08 mph, a world land speed record at the time although this was not recognised as the timekeepers had used stopwatches instead of the electrical timing apparatus required by the official rules.…

  • Robin Hood’s Bay

    Robin Hood’s Bay

    The best time to view the huge arc of Robin Hood’s Bay is at low tide when long curves of the rock strata are exposed. The Jurassic rocks of the Yorkshire coast were already old when the two of the plates that make up the earth’s surface collided causing buckling and folding of the strata,…

  • Castleton

    Castleton

    The location of the Norman castle after which the village of Castleton is named is today occupied by the large house with the circular towers showing what would have been the castle’s commanding position overlooking the River Esk. It was a motte castle without a bailey or courtyard with a stone keep with walls 13′…

  • Tea on the Topping

    Tea on the Topping

    It’s that time of the year again. The annual National Trust’s “Tea on the Topping”, tea and a delicious selection of homemade cakes on offer on Cleveland’s Matterhorn. The bright sunny day attracting hundred’s of climbers. How many people can you get on Roseberry? Open Space Web-Map builder Code

  • Cold Moor

    Cold Moor

    A view from Cringle Moor across to Cold Moor, one of the four bumps so obvious from the Cleveland plain. The footpath followed by the Cleveland Way and Coast to Coast long distance paths can be seen climbing to the 401m summit. The spoil heaps bottom left are 19th-century jet workings, the miners seeking the…

Care to comment?