Out & About …

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

Tag: bank

  • Lordstones Country Park from Cringley End, the north-west nose of Cringle Moor

    Lordstones Country Park from Cringley End, the north-west nose of Cringle Moor

    This privately owned park occupies the long flat col between Cringle Moor and Carlton Moor. Development began in 1986 with a “car park with public toilet and refreshment facilities together with accommodation for agricultural equipment”.  I remember it being highly controversial at the time but was mitigated by the café being discretely hidden under a…

  • Freedom Day

    Freedom Day

    Another ‘dog day’, so named because these hot and sultry days of summer (in the northern hemisphere at least) are associated with the Dog Star Sirius rising with the sun. And ‘Freedom Day’ to boot. ‘Freedom’ to all those key workers, NHS staff and care helpers who cannot avoid the risk of prolonged exposure, to…

  • Kirby Bank

    Kirby Bank

    Kirby Bank looking luxuriant under a coat of fresh bracken, the bane of the moors. On 14 June 1932, the Daily Mail carried a somewhat brief report: Climbed 41 Peaks in 24 Hours Mr. Robert Graham, of Keswick, Cumberland, has created a 24-hours walking and climbing record in Lakeland by scaling 41 peaks in an…

  • Carlton Bank

    Carlton Bank

    I wrote just a few weeks ago about a farmer by the name of Joseph Hugill from Raisdale, who was attacked and robbed on his way home from Kirby. That was in 1892. 25 years earlier, another Hugill unfortunately died on his way home. A report in the Shields Daily Gazette, on the 12 Jan.…

  • Eston Bank

    Eston Bank

    I do try to avoid anniversaries of births and deaths in these postings but on this in 1891, John Marley, the mining engineer who, it could be said, along with John Vaughan, gave birth to the iron industry on Teesside, died at the age of 67. Iron had been worked in the Cleveland area since…

  • Howden Gill on Ayton Bank with the Cleveland Hills in the distance

    Howden Gill on Ayton Bank with the Cleveland Hills in the distance

    Not many bees and insects around at the moment. In the midst of winter, they are either dormant or are still eggs, buried deep in the leaf litter. Honey bees will be cozy in their hives surviving on a sufficient supply of honey left for them by the beekeeper. But nationwide, bees and other pollinators…

  • Green Bank from Cringle End

    Green Bank from Cringle End

    Otherwise known as the Lord Stones Country Park, which should, of course, be the Lords’ Stone as there’s only one stone situated where the lands of three Lords met: Duncombe of Helmsley, Marwood of Busby Hall and Aislesby. A murky day, and windy too. On Cringle Moor holding the camera steading was not easy. No…

  • Battersby Crag

    Battersby Crag

    I first came across this old rusty gate many years ago when I was planning a night navigation exercise. That must have been in the 1990s. I had waded down through the steep heathery slope, stopping on top of the crag and looking down on to the spikes. For an instance, my heart missed a…

  • Dorothy’s Stone

    Dorothy’s Stone

    I met an oldish chap on the climb up Turkey Nab once and he told me this was Dorothy’s Stone. I wished I’d have pressed him why now. A mixture of thoughts. After the gloom of the overnight mist, the blue is refreshing and joyous. It’s enazuring or turning azure. An old word that is particularly…

  • Roseberry from Ryston Bank

    Roseberry from Ryston Bank

    September, the meteorologists say we are now into autumn, the ‘back-end‘ of the year when mornings are that bit chillier and trees show signs of taking on their russet hues. In Macbeth, Shakespeare referred to the season as ‘sear‘. The King laments he is in the autumn of his life, he is cursed and will…