Tag: hill
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Orange peel
“It is a sober commentary on the British way of life that the National Trust has to spend £250 a year picking up litter on its properties in the Lake District. People presumably visit these places to drink in the especial beauty of the scene, but apparently they leave them more or less covered in…
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Resurfaced laid path to Roseberry
A brand spanking new path. The National Park has been hard at work upgrading the path between Aireyholme Cottage and Roseberry. Over the winter it had become impassable with a gluppy mud. The farmer had, a few years ago, with good intentions, enclosed the path to the statutory 1½ metre width for a field edge.…
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Here be a dragon
“First Swainby meets the eye, next Whorlton near, Its ancient castle mouldering in a heap : A little distant stands a mount rotund, The form of Roseberry, but lower much: Upon its summit swords and divers arms Were found, dug up, supposed a battery there To batter down the castle built below.” PIERSON’S Roseberry. Whorl…
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Tinghoudale
Visiting wetlands is a rarity for me and has been almost non-existent since this pandemic started. I’ve been keeping an eye then on this little marshy nature reserve in the small valley between the Bousdale ridge and Grove Hill. The valley went by the Old Scandinavian name of Tinghoudale or ‘the valley beside the mound…
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The Folly
An early dash up Roseberry on an overcast morning. I’ll risk some wrath when I say this is not a shooting box even though a small plaque erected on the building by the National Park states that it is. It is shown on a sketch by George Cruit dated 1788 and game shooting was not…
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Top of Thief Lane
I woke up the the farming programme this morning, a weekly roundup as it’s Saturday, and one of the items was that 20 years ago yesterday, in 2001, was the first outbreak of foot and mouth at an abattoir in Essex. This lead to a nationwide lockdown not so dissimilar to our current one. The…
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Dry Stone Wall, Pinchinthorpe Moor
I just love the two tone look of a dry stone wall splattered with snow. This is on the edge of Pinchinthorpe Moor. In the background is of course Roseberry Topping. Roseberry Topping was at one time mooted for a monument to Captain James Cook. A monument had been discussed for forty years but, in…
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But what if Candlemas day is snowy, windy and foul …
It’s Candlemas, although it feels like just another Groundhog Day. Candlemas is a Christian feast day that sort of coincided with the pagan festival Imbolc, the mid-point between the winter solstice and Spring equinox. Feast days generally have some weather lore associated with them. Candlemas is no exception and there is a wealth of rhymes…
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Mount Fuji?
My first thought when I saw Roseberry Topping looking resplendent in a shaft of winter sun was of the Japanese mountain. We were driving along the A172 back towards Stokesley after a wet and splodgy walk on Scarth Wood Moor. Around the foot, a bank of cloud smothered the village of Great Ayton. A temperature…
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A review of the year with 20/20 vision
Without a doubt, it’s been an eventful year. Here is a selection of my photos that didn’t make the cut. Plus a few reminders of some of the news at the time. January “There is no threat to the Erasmus scheme, UK students will continue to be able to enjoy the benefits of exchanges with…