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It’s amazing what you come across in a Scottish forest
In 2012, a full-size football pitch was created in a plantation of spruce near the Scottish border town of Selkirk. Trees were felled and the timber used to make the goal posts, crowd barriers, benches, and changing rooms. The pitch had been carefully tendered. For just one day, four teams of amateur players — two…
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Frisian horses on the Southern Uplands
Cademuir Hill is a small ridge, barely 4km long south of Peebles in the Tweed valley. Yet it hosts 3 prehistoric forts. The photo is taken from the south-westernmost at 356m asl, arbitrarily named by the archaeologists as ‘Cademuir Hill 2’, towards the highest at 407m asl., ‘Cademuir Hill 1’. The 3rd fort, The Whaum,…
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Glen Vale and John Knox’s Pulpit
Another range of hills I’ve passed by many times before on journeys to the Highlands — the Lomond Hills. The main photo is Glen Vale, the Convenanters’ glen — a “ravine of rugged grandeur” — on account of the Presbyterian conventicles held during the ‘Killing Time‘ in the late 17th Century when such Convenanters as…
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Middledean Camp
Viewed from across the precipitous Middledean Burn, the double earthbanks of the Iron Age fort known as Middledean Camp stands out against the smooth rounded hills of Breamish Valley in the Cheviots. Double earthworks such as this are termed ‘bivallate’. Promontary hillforts are those which are defended by steep slopes on 2 or 3 sides.…
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Hutton Hall
This building has always intrigued me. Sited at the east end of the long tapering village green of Hutton Rudby, it was at one time seat of the Lord of the Manor of Hutton although it was split into two dwellings soon after 1947. While the whole building is Grade II listed, it is the…
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A Highcliffe dog
A ‘brynic‘ is some sort of sign in the sky foretelling some event. The end of a rainbow for instance might be a warning of a coming shower, if not a bad spell of weather. This rainbow, with its crock of gold at Highcliffe Nab, is not a complete one. A mere stump or ‘stob‘…
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The Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill 2022
So a new PM is inflicted upon us. One part of this government’s growth agenda was the ditching of environmental protections. So far there has been no indication of any reversal of this agenda with the coronation of the new PM. On the day when fracking was being debated in Parliament ‘The Retained EU Law…
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Old hedgerow, Airy Holme
A few scraggy hawthorn trees. A relic of an old hedgerow. The lower branches have been well browsed by sheep. A boundary is shown on the Ordnance Survey Six-Inch map of 1856. It is commonly believed that the age of a hedge can be estimated by counting the number of species in it. True, the longer…
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Eston Nab
Another dreich day so cheating again and posting a photo from yesterday’s jaunt over Eston Nab. The Nab is both loved and abused by the folk of Teesside. In a booklet entitled ‘Green Ways around Teesside‘, the ‘Rambler’ lamented on the state of the hill: “The remains of old bottles were scattered all along our…
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Yearby
An early, gloomy start from Yearby Bank back home via Eston Nab, a prominence which used to be a regular run but now I rarely go. After a few minutes, the sun broke over the hill revealing super lighting over the coastal plain. Yearby is that quiet hamlet at the foot of Yearby Bank, notorious,…
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