Tag: dale
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Commondale from Three Howes Rigg
The North Yorkshire Moors has been my playground since 1973, and yet every so often I get to someplace where I’ve never trod before. I’ve seen this view before, a mere glimpse whilst travelling at 60 mph down along Three Howes Rigg road on the way to Castleton. Cycling allows a longer view, but until…
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Site of Monastic Cell at Old Byland
Sir Nikolaus Pevsner (1902 – 1983) was an architectural historian who documented the principal historic buildings in every county in his ‘The Buildings of England‘. In his Yorkshire volume under Old Byland, he writes in the introduction to the village “the site of Byland Abbey was 1¼ m. NE of Old Byland“. I was fascinated…
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View from the top of Newgate Bank
Bilsdale directly below me, Hawnby and Ryedale in the distance separated by the hump of Easterside. A lovely day for a bike ride, plenty of apricity. It’s Mischief Night. At least it was when I was a kid, growing up in the 50s and 60s. The day before Bonfire Night. None of this Halloween plastic…
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Needle Point, Newtondale
I came across an image a while ago from the British Geological Society website of a crag in Newtondale called Needle’s Eye. That must be worth a visit. Unfortunately, the link no longer seems to be working so I’ve grabbed a copy from Google’s cache. An extract from an 1836 book “Illustrations of the Scenery…
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Lonsdale
I had a vague plan to run around the head of Lonsdale to Percy Cross but surveying the dale from Lonsdale quarry I remembered that I used to often follow a route crossing the valley by keeping upside of the moor wall. Those were the days when I rarely stuck to paths. On the descent…
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Waites House Farm, Westerdale
On 13th January 1858 the Teesdale Mercury carried a report: “SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION – An instance of spontaneous ignition among alum shale has lately occurred in the parish of Westerdale in the North Riding. At a certain point in Westerdale Head the process of jet mining has been carried on for some time past, and a…
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Westerdale and Crown End
Westerdale, as the name suggests is the westernmost dale of the valley of the River Esk, although why Westerdale and not just Eskdale is lost to time. It’s a dale which has escaped the 19th-century mineral extraction of other valleys. There was some jet mining but this was mostly small scale and has not left…
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Skeldersceugh Farm
A view from the south of Commondale, named after Bishop Colman of Lindisfarne who had been a monk at Whitby in the 7th-century. Top left, basking in the sunshine, is Skeldersceugh Farm which is likely to be the site of Skelderskew Grange, a monastic grange of Guisborough Priory. The name was first mentioned early in…
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Rosedale west side
This feature on the west side of Rosedale below the old mineral railway has always intrigued me. A ridge, perhaps a kilometre long, running parallel to the slope. It’s such an obvious feature yet it seems to have gone unobserved, or at least unrecorded as far as I can tell. I was once asked if…
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Upper Swaledale
The upper reaches of Swaledale feel remote, and no doubt in the depths of winter, Keld, the last village before the road begins the climb over Lamp Moss pass to Kirby Stephen must be a contender for the remotest village in England. But at the height of summer Keld is a busy place. A stopover…