Out & About …

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

Month: December 2018

  • Glaisdale Side

    Glaisdale Side

    Glaisdale is one of the Moors’ less visited dales. About 5km in length, running north-east to south-west. A true rural idyll. But this has not always been so. There is evidence of Medieval bloomeries belonging to the Guisborough Priory and of collieries at the head of the dale. The construction of the railway along the…

  • Low Cable Stone

    Low Cable Stone

    Not the easiest of places to get to, hidden away overlooking Tripsdale Beck. No Public Right of Way passes close by. A gamekeeper’s track can be made use of but the final 400m is a heather bash over Collar Ridge. But it’s well worth the effort. Tom Scott Burns, the author of many books on…

  • Stump Cross

    Stump Cross

    Winter on the high moors are mostly bleak, a brown heather carpet covered by a grey quilt but when the sun does shine it can be exhilarating. Not the place where medieval travellers would have ventured unnecessarily. However, even today to cycle from Danby following the River Esk to its mouth at Whitby, the obvious…

  • Carr Ridge and Hasty Bank

    Carr Ridge and Hasty Bank

    A menhir or standing stone on Urra Moor right next to the Cleveland Way. I suspect this stone has been erected in modern times simply because I can find no mention of it which I am sure there would be if it was indeed historically significant. As it is it gives a good foreground to…

  • Deck the hall with boughs of holly ….

    Deck the hall with boughs of holly ….

    On shrub clearance on Bridestones Moor and a large holly tree is amongst the casualties. Oh dear, it’s considered bad luck to fell a holly tree. But I didn’t actually fell it. The cutting of boughs to deck the halls is acceptable as is pollarding for use as winter fodder. Very nutritional apparently. Which leads…

  • The art of Kemplah Wood

    The art of Kemplah Wood

    I seized on an opportunity to be dropped off in Guisborough and run home and, as the weather was dire, decided to stick to the woods and go over my old training grounds. It’s almost thirty years since I lived in Guisborough but while the main forest tracks are the same much has changed under…

  • The first frost of the year

    The first frost of the year

    No temptation to hurkle-durkle this morning, a clear sky this dawn promised a good sunrise. Maybe Jack Frost had visited but there was no evidence of his telltale fern-like patterns on the windows. Or maybe nowadays he just avoids double glazed windows. But a thin layer of ice crystals did cover the grass and fallen…

  • Well, there’s good news and there’s bad news

    Well, there’s good news and there’s bad news

    The good news is that it looks like the Traffic Regulation Order restricting off road motorbikes and vehicles from using the medieval trod that climbs Kirby Bank has finally been issued and is in force. The trod was part of a pannierway connecting Rievaulx Abbey in Bilsdale with the River Tees. Off road motorcycles have…

  • Scotch Corner Chapel

    Scotch Corner Chapel

    I’m currently reading “The Plot” by Madeleine Bunting. It is the story of her father’s obsession with an acre of land adjoining the old Hambleton drovers’ road as it descends from the high moors to Oldstead and the Vale of York. Although I’ve passed by before, it is not an area I know that well.…

  • Bronze Age Round Cairn on a scorched moor

    Bronze Age Round Cairn on a scorched moor

    Sunday before last (18th) was a glorious November day. Blue skies, little wind with many walkers taking to the moors. I recall standing on Cliff Rigg and noticing the number of folk on Roseberry. But the scene was marred by dense black smoke coming from the direction of Newton and Great Ayton Moors. The periodic…