Out & About …

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

Category: North York Moors

  • Haze fire

    Haze fire

    In his book ‘Landmarks’, Robert Macfarlane refers to ‘daalamist‘, a Shetland word for low lying mists that gather in valleys in the mornings and dissipate when the sun rises. And it was a magnificent display of daalamist today that completely stole the show. It slowly crept up the vale of Cleveland, gradually enveloping Ayton and…

  • “It’s back to square one”

    “It’s back to square one”

    So headlined the Daily Mail this morning. Or as I heard on the radio; I didn’t actually read the paper. But it got me thinking where does that phrase come from. So I reached for my copy of the Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, the 1993 edition when the World Wide Web was still…

  • Cleveland Hills

    Cleveland Hills

    Another splodgy run up Capt. Cook’s monument and on to Roseberry, with distance views of the sun capped Cleveland Hills. Five minutes later I was in a blinding blizzard. On Easby Moor and in Newton Wood there was much evidence of off-road motorcycles and quad bikes. Circuits of the monument seem to have been particularly…

  • Mount Fuji?

    Mount Fuji?

    My first thought when I saw Roseberry Topping looking resplendent in a shaft of winter sun was of the Japanese mountain. We were driving along the A172 back towards Stokesley after a wet and splodgy walk on Scarth Wood Moor. Around the foot, a bank of cloud smothered the village of Great Ayton. A temperature…

  • Roseberry Common

    Roseberry Common

    More snow overnight. To use Scottish terms: a ‘fyoonach‘ or a light fall, just enough to cover the ground. By the afternoon, a ‘murg‘ or a heavy fall, ‘skelves‘,  large flakes of snow. And in the evening, with a temperature rise, rain. Changing weather then. Appropriate for January perhaps. January, named after Janus, the Roman god…

  • Greenhow Botton

    Greenhow Botton

    On the old 1857 O.S. map, this area is named as Greenhow Burton. Half a century later, it is mapped as Greenhow Botton. Such is the evolution of names over time. Or perhaps different surveyors misinterpreting the local dialect. The second word of the name derives from the Old Norse ‘Botn’ meaning a hollow. Off…

  • Codhill Heights

    Codhill Heights

    A lovely day. The high point of the ridge between Sleddale Beck and Codhill Slack on the moors south of Highcliff Nab, Codhill Heights is 296 metres above sea level and has a prominence of just 12 metres. One contour on the 1:25,000 O.S. map. The view is north-west towards Black Nab and the col…

  • A review of the year with 20/20 vision (Cont’d)

    A review of the year with 20/20 vision (Cont’d)

    The story so far … The government delayed lockdown and then opened too early, then kids were forced back to school, resulting in the greatest number of deaths in Western Europe. And then there was the A-level fiasco. Dominic Cummings broke the rules, as did Boris’s dad, and several MPs. The government spent millions on dodgy PPE…

  • A review of the year with 20/20 vision

    A review of the year with 20/20 vision

    Without a doubt, it’s been an eventful year. Here is a selection of my photos that didn’t make the cut. Plus a few reminders of some of the news at the time. January “There is no threat to the Erasmus scheme, UK students will continue to be able to enjoy the benefits of exchanges with…

  • In search of a navvy camp in Rosedale

    In search of a navvy camp in Rosedale

    Headed high today. To Blakey Ridge. Through the freezing fog to blue skies and a boreal wonderland. We were in search of the remains of a temporary encampment for the navvies that built the mineral railway around Rosedale. The location was at Black Intake just west of Green Head Brow. The first loaded train along the 14-mile mineral railway…