Out & About …

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

  • Roseberry Topping

    Roseberry Topping

    Woke up this morning to a hard frost, overcast but bright skies in the distant out over the North Sea. By nine o’clock, a whiteout. Utter chaos, all roads south at a standstill. By tea time, blue skies, roads clear, and, with Roseberry as a backdrop, warm enough for a moment’s reflection. Open Space Web-Map…

  • Petrified forest, Redcar Sands

    Petrified forest, Redcar Sands

    Every so often, after a particularly fierce storm, petrified tree stumps appear out of the sands on the beach at Redcar, only to be buried again a few weeks later. The last time was 2013. Last week’s Beast from the East scoured away a vast tract of sand revealing several tree stumps, fallen logs and…

  • Every year 100,000s of tonnes of plastic is thrown away, we must all do our bit

    Every year 100,000s of tonnes of plastic is thrown away, we must all do our bit

    Plastics have been getting a bad press recently. The horrific film footage in Sir David Attenborough’s Blue Planet 2 of turtles and birds entangled with discarded plastic has had a profound impact on public opinion. Just going on the amount in our recycling bin, we have managed to at least half our plastic use since…

  • Harpley’s Well

    Harpley’s Well

    Came across this peculiar sandstone structure while running through Heathwaite on the way back to Swainby. The lintel over the dilapidated door is carved “Harpley’s Well 1880”. Opposite Harpley House on Holgate Lane. It seems such a shame that the well has been neglected. I have no idea who Harpley was. Open Space Web-Map builder…

  • Ruin, Mount Vittoria

    Ruin, Mount Vittoria

    A well-visited ruin on Mount Vittoria, or Cold Moor to use its modern name. I prefer the more romantic 19th-century name. A name which conjures up a vision of a son or husband lost in a faraway land when Wellington’s forces routed the French under Bonaparte in the Battle of Vittoria. Pure speculation of course…

  • Odin’s Little Brother

    Odin’s Little Brother

    Just 20m shorter than its big brother, the climb up Little Roseberry is just as draining on tired legs. Walkers on the Cleveland Way have to descend it and then climb back up as part of the extension up Odin’s Hill, Roseberry Topping. Open Space Web-Map builder Code

  • Ayton Banks Alum Works

    Ayton Banks Alum Works

    A cold, overcast day. The fresh snow of the last few days has aged into a dirty wet surface. I found myself above Gribdale looking down on the heavily worked hillside of Cockshaw where the snow accentuated the contours of the Ayton Banks Alum Works that operated for a mere nine years in the latter…

  • Spring has sprung

    Spring has sprung

    The first day of Spring. Meteorologically speaking. The 1st of March. An arbitrary date that the Met Office has declared for their statistics. More snow overnight with strong winds. Yet in a sheltered hollow of Newton Wood, a snow-encrusted oak sapling with a stubborn leaf still clinging on. An appropriate poem for this day by…

  • On Ayton Bank

    On Ayton Bank

    The last day of February and I had had tentative thoughts of cycling into Middlesbrough to photograph the Newport Bridge for it was on this day in 1934 that the bridge was opened by the future King George VI. But more snow overnight put paid to that idea, so Plan B: head up on to…

  • Thundersnow?

    Thundersnow?

    The “Beast from the East” arrived in North Yorkshire as a lamb. No worse than a normal winter. In The Sun today there is an article about thundersnow, apparently a rare phenonmena in the UK when thunderstorms occurs in cold winter air and rain falls as snow. This may well have been the front of…

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