Tag: heather
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Where is the purple haze?
The odd sprig of ling or heather can be found on the moors, amongst the muddy brown remnants of the winter colouring. Why isn’t the heather at its finest? Surely it should be by now, this first week of August. I had a search of my back archives to illustrate the state of the heather…
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Turf Stone
On Bildsdale Moor West near Wether Hill. I haven’t been up here, certainly since lockdown. But not much to see as a blanket of wet cloud hung over the moor. Howes and boundary stones would provide photographic interest today. The Bilsdale Turf Stones are a series of eight stones, all inscribed with a ‘T’, 50…
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Hannah Coling Memorial
Over on the moors south of Scaling Dam Reservoir and I happened across this memorial to a woman who had died on the moor in 1848. H. COLING Perished here January 21st 27th 1848 I had heard there was a memorial somewhere on this moor but I wasn’t looking for it specifically. I found one…
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Masks
Sunshine, blue skies, a lovely morning to be out on the moors. No fear of losing your way in the fog today. No fear of being maskered. To ‘masker’ is a Yorkshire term meaning to render giddy, senseless, or bewildered as when lost in a blizzard, fog, or darkness. Masks are due to become very…
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‘A Wild Year’
Did you watch ‘A Wild Year‘ on BBC2 on Friday evening, featuring the North York Moors? It’ll be available on iPlayer for a while. I was left feeling disappointed. The filming was superb of course, slow motion and time lapsed, the usual BBC quality, but when it came to the inevitable section on grouse management,…
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It’s looking a bit black over Bill’s mother’s
An East Midlands expression that came back to me on Potter’s Ridge, a small hill that has Highcliffe Nab on its northwestern end. A few moments later the first drops of rain arrived. And don’t ask who Bill was, ’cause I never found out. On strange phrases, I learnt a new word today – ‘quockerwodger’…
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On Codhill Heights
Sans le chien so a chance to go off-piste. So this is looking back after crossing Rivelingdale from Percy Cross Rigg and climbing Codhill Heights. The map indicates an old field system hereabouts, but there is not much to see. This small standing stone may or may not be significant, but as Donkey said in…
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Simon Howe on Goathland Moor
It was on this day, 29th April 1770, that Great Ayton’s famous son, Captain James Cook landed at Botany Bay in Australia and “with the Consent of the Natives” claimed the whole continent “in the Name of the King of Great Britain“. Now whether Cook actually discussed the matter with the aboriginals is a moot…
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Great Ayton Moor
A sunny morning and a little obambulation over Great Ayton Moor. Surprisingly a rainbow. “A rainbow at night, fair weather in sight. A rainbow at morn, fair weather all gorn.” Happen to be near this cairn. Although Great Ayton Moor has many Bronze Age tumuli, sadly this cairn is not one of them. A modern…
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Gold Hill, Faceby Bank and Whorl Hill
A beautiful morning for a run along the escarpment to Knolls End and back via Thackdale. Surveying from left to right. Live Moor, peppered with Bronze Age features, barrows and field systems, was in the 19th-century common grazing for the villagers of Swainby who kept their donkeys used to carry coal and other goods. That…