Out & About …

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

Category: North York Moors

  • Percy Cross Rigg

    Percy Cross Rigg

    These posts often result from a faint memory which I then spend an hour or so trying to verify or research further in the evening — it beats watching ‘Strictly …’. But then, every so often, I plunge head first down a rabbit hole after I’ve pressed the post button. Yesterday was a case in…

  • Leven gorge, Kildale

    Leven gorge, Kildale

    A rather dull and murky walk home from Kildale. The estate have been opening up the gorge, yet further restricting access to the river and waterfall. Today, 19th October, 1536 is the day Henry VIII got tough on those who took part in the Pilgrimage of Grace. In a letter to the Duke of Suffolk,…

  • Scarth Nick

    Scarth Nick

    In the 18th and 19th centuries, Scottish drovers breasted this cleft in the Cleveland Hills driving their cattle to southern markets along the Hambleton Drove Road after fording the Tees at Yarm. It has probably used in prehistory, by the Romans and in medieval times. Today’s tarmac road winds up the climb from Swainby taking…

  • Roseberry from Larners Hill

    Roseberry from Larners Hill

    A bank of cloud still smothers Little Roseberry while big brother is clear under blue skies. By the time I made my way around there, the cloud had dissipated. As something new, I thought about doing a somewhat arbitrary ‘on this day’ posting, so I pulled up the Daily Mail for 15th October fifty years…

  • Grime Moor

    Grime Moor

    On rather dull overcast day with the National Trust on their Bridestones property. Quite a windy day and, for a fleeting moment, the sun came out. To the west of the small secluded valley Dovedale Griff,  which was once known locally as the ‘Doodle‘, is what remains of Grime Moor. The effect of the ploughing…

  • Whorl Hill, the lair of the Worm of Sexhow

    Whorl Hill, the lair of the Worm of Sexhow

    Autumnal sunshine, long shadows and a morning chill. A slight navigational error opened up this fine view of Whorl Hill, where there be dragons. Or rather one dragon, the worm of Sexhow. Thomas Parkinson wrote about it in his “Yorkshire legends and traditions” of 1888, but it was John Fairfax Blakeborough who suggested Whorl Hill…

  • Pinchinthorpe

    Pinchinthorpe

    I am very conscious about posting a photo of the same feature or from the same viewpoint. I knew had posted one from this spot before, but I now find I’ve actually posted three, here and here. But whatever; comparison of photos years apart can itself be interesting. I also forgot that in one of…

  • Belman Bank

    Belman Bank

    Around a decade ago, felling on Belman Bank — ‘Beautiful Mountain’ — revealed the great bowl left by Thomas Chaloner’s alum works, said to be the first in Yorkshire. The manufacture of crystals of alum, used in waterproofing hides and in medicinal products, from the alum shales in the Upper Lias beds is a complicated…

  • Thimbleby Moor

    Thimbleby Moor

    Finally, two hours after leaving Osmotherley, a view of distant scenery.  I had seen nothing except the forested Thimbleby Bank and clag — cloud or mist, however you want to call it. With Osmotherley opening out before me, I was left with no doubt this was the Thimbleby Estate, for every path junction, every decision…

  • Sunset, Scaling Dam Reservoir

    Sunset, Scaling Dam Reservoir

    On this day in 1926, it was reported, most probably in the Darlington & Stockton Times: A VILLAGE FEUD – Insult from Stokesley Much heat has been engendered in Great Ayton by an utterance from Councillor Robert Armstrong. The councillor is one of Stokesley’s representatives on the Rural District Council. At a recent meeting of…