Category: Roseberry Common
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A Gulp of Swallows
One of those joyous moments is when nature comes so close. It may be fleeting, so quick you’ve barely time to register. Or it may last longer, with time to appreciate the colours, sounds and textures. It is said that when swallows skim low over water, rain is coming. Conversely, a high flight signifies fine…
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Fireweed
The pinks of the Rosebay Willowherb are a common sight in summer but often overlooked. It’s a coloniser plant traditionally the first to grow after a fire, hence the folk name Fireweed. But it has not always so. The Georgians considered it quite a rarity and regarded it as a garden plant. Even as late…
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Bracken bashing on Roseberry Common
A wet return to volunteering for the National Trust after the Coronavirus lockdown. A nice simple task to ease the rusty joints: bracken bashing, which also has the benefit of enforcing social distancing. The common was sprayed last year with a bracken specific herbicide so today was just keeping on top on any persistent fronds.…
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Hedge Bedstraw
I thought at first someone had placed this posy of flowers in the top of the one metre high Tuley tube, but after much deliberation, the family conclusion is that it’s Hedge Bedstraw (Galium mollugo), a herbaceous annual of the same family of plants that gives us the sticky weed or cleavers, those long straggling…
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Finally a sunny morning and an escape from the mud
Looking down from Cockle Scar onto the village of Newton-under-Roseberry. A cold morning with just enough frost to harden the clarty paths. In the shade of the north-west slope, it’ll be a couple of hours yet before it’s warmed by the winter sun. At the western end of the village, the roof of the National…
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Little Roseberry
Falling Foss was the aim but overnight snow had closed the Whitby road at Birk Brow and Gerrick. Drove for an hour and ended up back in Guisborough. A couple of hours later and the snow was rapidly disappearing off the Cleveland Hills. Quickly come quickly go. Suddenly a reminder that spring is just around…
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Location, location, location
A wet day with sleet and low cloud on Roseberry Common removing Rowan trees and creating wildlife habitats with the brashings. This might sound harsh, cutting down trees especially in these days of a growing awareness of their essentiality in the removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Roseberry Common is an area of semi-open…
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Cotoneaster, Roseberry Common
The lull before Storm Brendon. Sporadic sunshine and a meander around Roseberry Common. This small tree full of brightly coloured red berries stood out amongst the muted browns and greens of the winter foliage. Berries bigger and redder than haws, not a rowan. Whereas birds have been almost stripped the neighbouring rowans and hawthorns bare…
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High Bousdale from Roseberry
A view from the summit of Roseberry Topping towards Guisborough down the forested valley of High Bousdale, between Bousdale Hill and Ryston Bank with the Hanging Stone at its nab. High Bousdale was once contemplated as a means of access to the ironstone holdings below Roseberry. There would have been an incline from the Middlesbrough…
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Autumn Equinox
At 08:50 this morning the ecliptic path of the Sun crossed the celestial equator and day and night were of equal length. For those of us in the northern hemisphere it’s the Autumn Equinox. So my project for today was to take an autumnal photo. I had in mind a palette of “feuille-morte” of the…