Tag: hill
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Bracken spraying on Roseberry
Roseberry looks different. Striped by quad bike tracks spraying the bracken that infests the Common. Bracken is found worldwide and in Britain, it is particularly invasive especially on the acidic soils of our moorlands. It’s always been with us, a pioneer plant quickly establishing itself as prehistoric man cleared the ancient woodland. But bracken remained…
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Garfit Gap
Popped up Hasty Bank and Cold Moor for an amble around. A pleasant morning, loads of walkers on the Cleveland Way. This is Garfit Buttress, the south-western end of the outcrop of sandstone crags known as the Wainstones. Overlooking Garfit Gap towards Cold Moor. A view I’ve looked at many times, yet fresh every time.…
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Summerhouse Field
I think the farmer who tenants the Summerhouse field must be a reader of this blog. Just nine days after writing I hadn’t seen this field pastured for years, there were cattle lazing and grazing about among the tall grasses this morning. Although it is well known that Roseberry Topping is owned by the National…
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Blakey Topping
A rewarding day on Thompson’s Rigg with the constant backdrop of Blakey Topping. The task was to install water vole fencing along Crosscliff Beck. Now that is not fencing to keep the water voles in but to keep sheep out. Water voles are one of our rarest native mammals and have suffered a sharp decline…
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Slioch from Loch Maree
An early morning wander with the dog along the shore of Loch Maree, the mighty Torridonian sandstone massif of Slioch, 980m high, dominating the view to the south. Its sides from this view is entirely defended by buttresses, crags and scree.
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Suilven
A wander up to Fionn Loch, the location for a classic photo of Suilven but the top was in cloud. On the way down I looked back and it had cleared. Ah well, that’s the way it goes. It is thought the name Suilven comes from a contraction of the Norse sulur meaning a pillar…
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Cranstackie from Beinn Spionnaidh
The two most northerly Corbetts. 45 minutes earlier I was on top of Cranstackie in the distance in 70 mph winds, rain with no visibility. I had decided to call it a day and abort an attempt on Beinn Spionnaidh, but by the time I made the col the mist had cleared and the rain…
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Cold Moor from The Wainstones
One of my main sources of knowledge and inspiration is Frank Elgee’s 1912 book The Moorlands of North Eastern Yorkshire. Elgee was born in 1880 and was a distinguished writer of the geology, archaeology and natural history of the North York Moors. Largely self-taught, he was the curator of the Dorman Museum in Middlesbrough from…
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Drake Howe
At 435m Cringle Moor, or Cranimoor as Frank Elgee that local archaeologist, geologist and naturalist would have it, is the third highest hill in the North York Moors. Drake Howe adorns the summit. A large Early Bronze Age bowl barrow or burial mound, making it over 3,500 years old. Elgee suggests that the name Drake…
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New artwork at Roseberry
Inspired by Leo Fitzmaurice’s installation at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, this artist prefers the anonymity in the style of Banksy. Here, he/she has captured a sense of clarity that is underpinned by a playful confusion, the essence of a mundane and familiar object in a way that makes us reconsider our assuming eyes. It is not…