Category: Great Ayton Moor
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An old favourite — Great Ayton Moor Bronze Age round cairn
I’ve photographed it many times before: — It’s tempting to think of cairns as permanent, but there has been some noticeable movement in this pile of stones since 2007. I saw today the gamekeepers have buried an animal trap in a metal box amongst the stones so this may have contributed. This is a ‘round…
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Great Ayton Moor
It’s been a while, a blue sky and high cirrus clouds, and a huge sigh of relief from the hundreds of Red grouse inhabiting the moor. December 10th, the last day of the grouse shooting season. They’re safe now until the “Glorious Twelfth”, the 12th August, free to survive the winter and to procreate, to…
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Percy Cross Rigg
These posts often result from a faint memory which I then spend an hour or so trying to verify or research further in the evening — it beats watching ‘Strictly …’. But then, every so often, I plunge head first down a rabbit hole after I’ve pressed the post button. Yesterday was a case in…
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The bonebreaker of Great Ayton Moor
It’s been a botanical sort of week. Bog asphodel, I’ve always thought it a strange name. The bog bit is easy, but asphodel? Sounds very un-English to me. Its use was first documented in the late 14th-century and derives from the Latin ‘asphodelus‘ and the Greek ‘asphodelos‘ meaning the king’s spear. It was “the peculiar…
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Lonsdale Quarry
I often end up at this quarry. It avoids a good chunk of the busy gravel track along the escarpment between Gribdale and Little Roseberry. In all the years I think I have only seen anyone else here once – a couple wild camping. Its name appears on the 1853 O.S. map, and is probably…
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Dear Rishi Sunak,
I am writing this open letter, as one of your constituents, to express my concern at some of the aspects of the introduction of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill 2021 which I believe has been deliberatively drafted as an excessively lengthy document (307 pages) and which is being rushed through the Commons on…
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From Crows to Cobras
I thought I would pop along to see if this ladder trap I last visited a couple of years ago had been in use. It doesn’t look like it. The dead crow that was there previously has long since long and the access gate was left open. Although these traps are not selective, birds of…
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What’s below this pond on Newton Moor?
I’m guessing this is a manmade pond, at the head of Howden Gill. It’s not shown on the 1958 OS Map. I’ve photographed it before but have always assumed it to be on Great Ayton Moor, but on closer inspection it’s actually to the north of the Newton parish boundary, so strictly that will make…
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Cock o’ the North
Ok, I known it’s a name more usually associated with the much smaller Brambling but I thought it suited this cock grouse guarding its territory. A territory which includes the pre-historic cairn cemetery and earthworks of Great Ayton Moor. The centrepiece is undoubtedly a Neolithic chambered cairn upon which the grouse is perched. It comprises…
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Last night, Hrímfaxi passed by, covering the ground with his spittle
I hope you are sufficiently replete after your haggis suppers with neeps and tatties. Happy Burns’ Night and all that; this the 262nd anniversary of the birth of Scotland’s national bard. I ended up today on Great Ayton Moor, the round cairn sprayed white with a featherlike hoar frost, a frost that forms when water…