Out & About …

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

Month: August 2017

  • Coots

    Coots

    Confined to the canal towpath again. Rain has kept the bike under cover. I have felt closer to wildlife these last two days than a week on the moors. Foxes yesterday, herons, cormorants, and plenty of ducks, swans, and coots. This pair was hitching a ride in the rain on a log. The saying “as…

  • Lee Navigation

    Lee Navigation

    Not my usual habitat. Down in London for a couple of days. After the drive down the Lee Navigation canal provided some fresh air of a sort. It flows from Hertford to the River Thames sometimes alongside the River Lea, sometimes parallel with it. A shortage of hills but I did see a pair of…

  • Boundary Stone, Great Ayton Moor

    Boundary Stone, Great Ayton Moor

    Sorry but I just couldn’t resist another photo of the purple swathe of a heather moor. The ling is now in full bloom and for just a few weeks the colour is glorious. Highcliff Nab is in the distance and in the foreground is a sandstone boundary marker dating from the 19th century. ‘R C’…

  • Sunday afternoon on Roseberry

    Sunday afternoon on Roseberry

    Roseberry summit, Sunday afternoon, a honeypot for the crowds, in spite of the threat of rain. Attracted by the prospect of tea and cakes provided by the National Trust.

  • Tick magnets

    Tick magnets

    There seems to be less sheep on the moors nowadays. Not sure if this is a deliberate policy.  Certainly, in other upland areas, there are concerns about over grazing. At one-time moorland farmers were actively encouraged to graze their sheep on the moors by gamekeepers. The sheep would act as magnets for ticks which also…

  • Sleddale

    Sleddale

    For a brief few weeks the moors are a sea of purple heather which is now at its best. Seen from Highcliff Gate, Sleddale Farm appears an island of lush green pasture. The name means a wide flat valley and was probably a meadow of summer pasture before being given to the priory to be…

  • Scar House Reservoir

    Scar House Reservoir

    Scar House was the third reservoir in upper Nidderdale to be built for the Bradford Corporation Waterworks. Construction work took 15 years finally completed in 1936 with one million tons of masonry being quarried from on Carle Fell opposite. The incline leading to the large quarry can be seen in the photo. The workers and…

  • Live Moor

    Live Moor

    Setting off from Mount Grace Priory this morning I overtook plenty of walkers doing the Cleveland Way, all fresh from their overnight accomodation in Osmotherley. In fact the only person going the other way was this solitary walker on Live Moor about to climb  the few contours to its summit. To the right, hard to…

  • Ee baa gum

    Ee baa gum

    Today, August 1st, is White Rose Day or Yorkshire Day, a modern invention founded by the Yorkshire Ridings Society in 1975. I would like to say I wore a wear white rose and had Yorkshire Pudding for dinner but ran around the fields of Great Busby in North Yorkshire instead with the Cleveland Hills forever…