Category: Roseberry Common
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Roseberry from Carr Ridge
It seems a bit of a waste. Posting a distant photo of my local hill. I had planned a wander over Urra Moor. A dull start but I could see this patch of sunlight slowly making its way over the Eston Hills. I figured sooner or later it would shine on Roseberry. I wasn’t disappointed.…
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A vote to ban ‘trail-hunting’ on National Trust land
Regular readers of this blog will know I volunteer for the National Trust on properties on the North York Moors. I do this principally to give something back to an organisation whose values I fully support. I am not fantastically enthused about old houses and gardens, it is conservation and the natural environment that interest…
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Bartle day
A dialect name for St. Bartholomew‘s Day, 24th August. A name that is preserved in the 19th-century poem by Captain John Harland ‘Reeth Bartle Fair’, a fair that was held at Reeth in Swaledale on St. Bartholomew’s Day. There are several weather related sayings for Bartle day: At St. Bartholomew, There comes cold dew. Which…
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Rosebay willow herb
Until the industrial revolution Chamerion angustifolium was a comparatively rare plant of woodland clearings and was often planted in gardens. Since then it has become the most successful coloniser of open land, embankments, waste grounds. I can remember the fluffy seeds being carried along in the draft of a thundering steam train. Each plant produces…
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Jet mining on Roseberry Common
An intricate necklace of 110 beads of jet was found in a burial cist in Kilmartin, Argyll. It has been dated to between 2050 and 1800 BC. The jet is considered to be ‘Whitby Jet’. Jet is the fossilised remains of the Araucaria or monkey puzzle tree that were buried in marine sediments during the…
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Heath bedstraw, Roseberry Common
Two summers ago (1 B.C. – Before Covid) Roseberry Common was sprayed with Asulox, an herbicide that specifically targets bracken. The intention was that a breed of hardy cattle would then be introduced which would over time control the bracken by trampling any remaining rhizomes and fronds. In addition it was expected that an annual…
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Orange peel
“It is a sober commentary on the British way of life that the National Trust has to spend £250 a year picking up litter on its properties in the Lake District. People presumably visit these places to drink in the especial beauty of the scene, but apparently they leave them more or less covered in…
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On this day, in 1971, the end of an era
As we further attempt to cocoon ourselves from the European project, now may be the time to think again about that disastrous venture that happened on this day in 1971, fifty years ago. Decimalisation was the brainchild of Ted Heath’s Tory Government, plunging the country into chaos. Overnight the old currency of pounds, shillings and…
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Roseberry Common
More snow overnight. To use Scottish terms: a ‘fyoonach‘ or a light fall, just enough to cover the ground. By the afternoon, a ‘murg‘ or a heavy fall, ‘skelves‘, large flakes of snow. And in the evening, with a temperature rise, rain. Changing weather then. Appropriate for January perhaps. January, named after Janus, the Roman god…
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Roseberry and the Covid tiers
FaceBook is buzzing. The local BBC has reported that “while part [of Roseberry Topping] is in Redcar and Cleveland, subject to the tier three restrictions, its peak is in Hambleton in tier two” and folk have really got themselves into a tizzy. The broadcaster had picked up a story from Teesside Live which also headlined…