Out & About …

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

Author: Fhithich

  • Huthwaite Green

    Huthwaite Green

    Also known as Heathwaite, names which are as Yorkshire as a name can be, the ‘thwaite’ element coming from the Old Scandinavian word for a clearing: thveit. Heathwaite means a high clearing and Huthwaite a hill clearing. This view over the buttercup meadows of Scugdale is a familiar sight for walkers on the Cleveland Way,…

  • Roseberry

    Roseberry

    Last summer the National Trust commissioned a local artist to paint one face of the trig point on Roseberry in an attempt to discourage graffiti. And, by and large, it worked. For a year the artwork has been respected and the trig point has been left relatively clean. I was ambivalent. Now a self-proclaimed “street…

  • Surprise View, Gillamoor

    Surprise View, Gillamoor

    Exit the tabular hills village of Gillamoor towards Hutton-le-Hole and the road suddenly turns left and starts a steep descent. Pause at the bend, the top of Pennab Bank, and take in a superb view of lower Farndale. Judging from old postcards of this view for sale on eBay, when John Keble, an Anglican clergyman,…

  • Pointer Stone

    Pointer Stone

    Pamperdale Moor seems to be randomly scattered with sandstone boulders of various shapes and sizes. In the middle of an area denoted as a Bronze Age field system on the OS map is a triangular stone propped up on another boulder. Apparently, it has a tapered cup mark on it, rock art. It has been…

  • End of Paddy Waddell’s Railway

    End of Paddy Waddell’s Railway

    I’ve written about Paddy Waddell’s Railway before, the railway that never was. A grand plan devised in the 1870s to link the ironstone mines at Glaisdale with the North East Railway at Skelton. Embankments were built and cuttings excavated and just one bridge was constructed here at Rake House near Lealholm just before the line…

  • Lenticular clouds

    Lenticular clouds

    Super clouds this morning. Lenticular clouds I think formed when high winds flow over an obstruction such as a mountain range producing a standing wave such as you often see in whitewater on a river. If the temperature at the top of the wave drops to below the dew point, moisture in the air will…

  • Two bridges over the Tees

    Two bridges over the Tees

    Until the building of the Tees Barrage towards the end of the 20th century, the River Tees was still tidal at Yarm. A wooden bridge existed in the 13th century and was replaced by a stone one in about 1500 thus ensuring Yarm became a strategic crossing point of the river and ensured the development…

  • Middlesbrough

    Middlesbrough

    Yes, honestly. But not the Infant Hercules by the River Tees, for Middlesbrough is the name of the spur opposite at the foot of Black Hambleton. The one with the small copse on top, Moor House Plantation, and surrounded by fields, ‘improved’ moorland to fatten up the cattle while their drovers rested at the Chequers…

  • Marwood School

    Marwood School

    The stone building overlooking the River Leven is Marwood school, opened in 1851. It was endowed by the Rev. George Marwood of Busby Hall to provide Anglian education for the children of Great Ayton. Open Space Web-Map builder Code

  • Bransdale Mill

    Bransdale Mill

    The National Trust is currently finishing off the renovation of Bransdale Mill as bunkhouse accommodation but the waterwheel and milling mechanism is badly in need of preservation to prevent further deterioration. The mill dates from the 18th-century and rebuilt in 1842 according to a datestone although a mill probably existed on the site since medieval…