Out & About …

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

Month: February 2019

  • Mossy Oak

    Mossy Oak

    I survived about an hour this morning on Carlton Moor. Battered by the wind and soaked by the rain. Decided to return along the north-west facing Faceby Bank following the ruined dry stone wall of Great Bonny Cliff Wood in the shelter of Carlton Moor. Came across this peaceful spot dominated by an amazing old…

  • I’m doing fine …

    I’m doing fine …

    … up here on Cloud Nine. There is a measurement for the amount of cloud cover in the sky. That is the ‘okta‘. Not surprisingly there are eight of them. Zero is when the sky is completely clear of cloud and an okta value of eight is when the sky is completely covered. so four…

  • Permissive Footpath, Newton Wood

    Permissive Footpath, Newton Wood

    I know this is not the most architecturally significant structure but it will soon be gone so I’ve taken this photo for posterity. Work started this week on upgrading the permissive footpath running along the bottom of Newton Wood. The two sections of wooden boardwalk, which at least twenty-one years old, will be replaced by…

  • Skelton Beck

    Skelton Beck

    Valley Gardens, Saltburn, at the confluence of Saltburn Gill with Skelton Beck. A seemingly slow and lazy stream just before it passes under the road bridge to meander across the sands into the North Sea. Can this really be the stream mentioned in an 1853 book (The Topographer and Genealogist Vol. II, edited by John…

  • Roseberry Ironstone Mine

    Roseberry Ironstone Mine

    It would have been bleak for the folk of Great Ayton on this day in 1921 when the 220 workers at the Roseberry Ironstone Mine received notice to cease work, at the end of which the mine would be idle. It would have been the talk of the village. The mine had reopened in 1906…

  • Sunrise Over Capt. Cook’s

    Sunrise Over Capt. Cook’s

    Inside all day gazing longingly over the sunny snow-covered Cleveland Hills. So an early run with the dog, no headtorch needed, and a lovely red sky to finish. Open Space Web-Map builder Code

  • A morning jog in the snow is so exhilarating

    A morning jog in the snow is so exhilarating

    And following from yesterday’s pagan festival of Imbolc, today is 40 days after Christmas so it must be Candlemas, the Christian Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary. I don’t pretend to understand what that means but content with the quip that it is by now light enough to rise, pray and start…

  • And so into February

    And so into February

    The shortest month of the year, February takes its name from a Roman festival called “Februa” where the city was purified and evil spirits banished. The first day of the month happens to be the halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, qualifying it as the beginning of spring and the start of…