Out & About …

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

  • Has the Duke of York ever been to Yorkshire?

    Has the Duke of York ever been to Yorkshire?

    It’s been a while since I’ve posted a photo of Capt. Cook’s Monument on Easby Moor. Ugly looking isn’t it. Its only beauty coming from its familiarity as part of the landscape. James Cook is of course Cleveland’s most famous son, even though when he left Middlesbrough was just a hamlet, home to 25 people…

  • In search of an Iron Age “encampment” on Highcliffe Nab

    In search of an Iron Age “encampment” on Highcliffe Nab

    I was intrigued by this view of Highcliffe Nab that has been opened by the felling in Guisborough Wood and particularly with what appears to be a distinct earthwork descending diagonally from the nab to the col of Highcliffe Gate. First thing when I got in was to have a look at the Lidar mapping,…

  • Sir Alfred Pease

    Sir Alfred Pease

    “I always considered that the best, highest and most difficult pheasants in England were the ones sent over the guns from Hanging Stone and the hill tops of Hutton and Pinchinthorpe, for they were not only very high and fast, but divers and twisters. I see guns on November 21st and 22nd shot 562 of…

  • Scarlet Elfcup

    Scarlet Elfcup

    What do the woodland elves use to drink their morning dew? Why, elfcups of course. On the damp floor of the wooded Slacks Quarry, the vivid red of the Scarlet Elfcups are in sharp contrast to the greens of the mosses. Sarcoscypha austriaca is its scientific name, meaning from Austria, although this fungus is found…

  • Hutton Hall

    Hutton Hall

    When the Hutton Hall estate — the home Sir Joseph Whitwell Pease — was put on the market in 1903, it was described as ”a singularly beautiful and truly valuable property, situated in a rich and fertile valley …. comprising about 1,629 acres, mostly and comprising a distinguished family mansion in the domestic Gothic style,…

  • Pamperdale Moor

    Pamperdale Moor

    I often end up posting a photo from the remotest part of my run/walk. I guess I have a tendency to think anything closer to the car park can be saved for another day. It was a late decision to venture onto Pamperdale Moor, or ‘Femperdale Moor’ as it used to be called, circuiting the…

  • Little Fryup Dale

    Little Fryup Dale

    The Rev. J.C. Atkinson, writing in the late 19th-century, had a fascination for Little Fryup Dale, or rather the folklore associated with the area around the little knoll on the right, Fairy Cross Plain. It’s might seem odd that a man of the cloth should be so preoccupied with fairies, elves and hobs but belief…

  • Bridestones Moor

    Bridestones Moor

    A day spent cutting self sown, mainly birch saplings from the Bridestones heather moorland under a glorious blue sky. A day also for twitchering in which murmuring fieldfare, perhaps getting impatient, itching to leave for the summer, and a skylark, first of the year. If left the birch would gradually begin to dominate. Bridestones Moor…

  • Kildale girl awarded the R.S.P.C.A.’s Gold Medal

    Kildale girl awarded the R.S.P.C.A.’s Gold Medal

    On the 10 July 1930, the Nottingham Evening Post published the following story: HEROIC GIRL. PERILOUS DESCENT INTO MINE SHAFT TO RESCUE A SHEEP. GOLD MEDAL AWARD. The story of a Kildale (N. Yorkshire) girl’s bravery in rescuing from a disused stone mine a sheep which had been lost in a snow-storm has just been…

  • Oak sapling in Newton Wood

    Oak sapling in Newton Wood

    Or should I say a ‘yack‘ sapling, yack being an 18th-century Yorkshire term for the oak. We also have ‘yackrams‘ for acorns. This is really a follow-on from yesterday’s post about the planting of woodland on bracken covered slopes unsuitable for general agriculture. Newton Wood is a predominately oak woodland but with ash, lime, sycamore,…

Care to comment?