Out & About …

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

Month: October 2020

  • Waites House Farm, Westerdale

    Waites House Farm, Westerdale

    On 13th January 1858 the Teesdale Mercury carried a report: “SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION – An instance of spontaneous ignition among alum shale has lately occurred in the parish of Westerdale in the North Riding. At a certain point in Westerdale Head the process of jet mining has been carried on for some time past, and a…

  • Fast Castle

    Fast Castle

    This is a part of the country I just didn’t know existed. We’re usually dashing past on the A1. But it’s a fascinating coastline, rugged, unfrequented with few paths. Fast Castle looked interesting, perched on an inaccessible promontory called Castle Knowe. It was built in the 14th-century, destroyed and rebuilt in the 16th but in…

  • Bass Rock

    Bass Rock

    I must confess, I have never set foot on the island. But it looked so white in the October sunshine and clear air I couldn’t resist a photo. The whiteness comes from the thousands of gannets and other sea birds that live on this gigantic lump of basalt. Look closely and you can make out…

  • Cove

    Cove

    Painful memories. Eleven months ago I had a slight tumble off the sea wall opposite. In the centre of the photo, there is a blue notice board with an orange life ring that I must have fallen past, although I didn’t have time to read the warnings about the dangers of falling off. No permanent…

  • The Cleveland Way at Codhill Plantation

    The Cleveland Way at Codhill Plantation

    A day for saying farewell to a good friend and a personal reflection on an early walk. Jon Williams was my training partner during those years we both lived in Guisborough during the 1970/80s. Many times we pushed each other across the boggy Codhill Slack on the final climb up to Highcliff Nab. Of course,…

  • Brandy Well

    Brandy Well

    John Fairfax-Blakeborough in his 1912 book with “Life in a Yorkshire village” writes: Speaking of superstitions reminds me of a tradition that the water in Brandy Well, half way up Carlton Bank, has most wonderful curative properties, and that a wish made here when drinking, is pretty certain to be fulfilled. The well is by the road side…

  • It’s looking a bit black over Bill’s mother’s

    It’s looking a bit black over Bill’s mother’s

    So me mam used to say. A Nottinghamshire expression. But who was Bill? Some say Kaiser Wilhelm II. Some say Shakespeare. This was from Carr Ridge, looking like it’s raining over Stokesley. Not sure if this is the shower that drenched me twenty minutes ago or a new one approaching. Open Space Web-Map builder Code

  • Whorlton Moor Shooting House

    Whorlton Moor Shooting House

    At the beginning of September, a photo did the rounds on FaceBook showing some graffiti on a shooting house purporting to have been done by Extinction Rebellion. This was linked to an article on the website Campaign for Protecting Moorland Communities (C4PMC), a site “dedicated to protecting moorland communities and the driven grouse shooting”. I…

  • Not a lot to see, all is still,among the tubes of Cockshaw Hill

    Not a lot to see, all is still,
    among the tubes of Cockshaw Hill

    It was the National Poetry Day on Thursday, so my pathetic attempt is a bit late. Would it be too pretentious to call it an epigram? Anyway a wet miserable day, but Sunday’s looking better.

  • Dub, Great Ayton Moor

    Dub, Great Ayton Moor

    A ‘dub‘ is a Northern word for a patch of water, which could be anything from a puddle on a path or road to a pool in a river, deep enough for swimming or a favoured fishing mark. The earliest attestation is in a perambulation of the liberty of Ripon in 1481. Sometimes a stream…