Out & About …

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

Category: North York Moors

  • Kissing Gate, top of Thief Lane

    Kissing Gate, top of Thief Lane

    At the top of Thief Lane there is a five-bar metal gate which I heard had succumbed to the ravishes of Storm Arwen but it seems the farmer has wasted no time in fixing it so I had to make do with the adjacent kissing gate. I’d thought of entitling the post ‘Gate-crashed‘, which is…

  • Bousdale Hill Farm

    Bousdale Hill Farm

    Early morning jog up Roseberry. The day before the storm — Arwen, I hear it’s been named — a character from Lord of the Rings? A farm had been established on Bousdale Hill, the long spur extending northwards by Roseberry Common, by 1868. Prior to this it would have been rough upland pasture. The farm…

  • Rainbow, rainbow, Brack an gang hame …

    Rainbow, rainbow,
    Brack an gang hame …

    The dark clouds to the north east have been ominous all day. Kept at bay by the bitterly cold nor-westerlies. There’s always something striking about a rainbow. They are always in the opposite direction to the sun and a ‘Rainbow in the morning gives fair warning’ indicates rain in the west and generally heading your…

  • Roseberry from Carr Ridge

    Roseberry from Carr Ridge

    It seems a bit of a waste. Posting a distant photo of my local hill. I had planned a wander over Urra Moor. A dull start but I could see this patch of sunlight slowly making its way over the Eston Hills. I figured sooner or later it would shine on Roseberry. I wasn’t disappointed.…

  • Different moor, different view

    Different moor, different view

    I’ve never been on this bit of Kildale Moor before. Never seen Capt. Cook’s Monument from this particular angle. Usually I’m on my bike when I cross Brown Hill but today I was on foot so I was minded to leave the tarmac and head south until the view opened up. But the sun broke…

  • Cod Beck Reservoir

    Cod Beck Reservoir

    The head of the reservoir in the Sheep Wash valley captures the low-lying November sun. Cod Beck Reservoir was opened in 1953 for the Northallerton and District Water Board, but one had actually been mooted in the 19th-century as part of a proposed scheme by the Borough of Stockton-on-Tees. In the Parliamentary session for 1869,…

  • Roseberry Topping looking splendid this morning

    Roseberry Topping looking splendid this morning

    Just a couple of weeks ago, I heard a joke. It was not told to me specifically but to the handful of blokes I was with. It was not new, I’d heard it before, many years ago. I won’t repeat it but essentially it was playing on the assumed intelligence of our neighbours across the…

  • How York paid its MP’s

    How York paid its MP’s

    The autumnal colours of Kildale Wood are overpowering. Just the other day, I pulled up a page from an 1889 edition of the York Herald for a completely unrelated subject, when I noticed the headline in the next column: — HOW YORK PAID ITS M.P’s. It was just a short piece, a letter I think…

  • The one that got away

    The one that got away

    I nearly ran over a fish today. It was massive. This big — hands held wide apart. There I was, cycling down Hob Hole and this ginormous fish was wriggling across the ford. Its dorsal fin and back were clear of the water which was about two to three inches deep. By the time I…

  • CSRT Remembrance Commemoration

    CSRT Remembrance Commemoration

    The Cleveland Search and Rescue Team held their Remembrance Commemoration at the memorial plaque to the airmen who were killed in the Lockheed Hudson aircraft crash in 1940. See here and here for more details. It has been recommended to me that I read Rudyard Kipling’s short story ‘The Gardener’ on this day. It’s a…