Tag: Forest
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Haswell’s Hut
Dull, overcast, and menacing rain. The blue skies over a snow blanketed moors seem an age ago. ‘Haswell’s Hut (Site of)’ is a feature named on the 1856 Ordnance Survey map that has intrigued me for some time. It is shown as just south of the Spot Height of 714 feet and east of the […]
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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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Remains of old forest, Gleann Sithidh
Today is Earth Day 2020, an event which I fear will go largely unheeded. Without doubt Corvid 19 is a global crisis yet we are in another global crisis which is not happening so fast, but it is happening all the same. Climate change. The theme for this 50th anniversary of Earth Day is climate […]
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Exercising
Day 26 of the Lockdown. Or is it? Life has settled into a routine. Get up, exercise, eat, doze, an odd job or two around the house, eat again, then start thinking about tomorrow’s posting. This crisis has made me realise just how fortunate I am in having easy access to woods and open land. […]
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Roseberry through Gribdale Gap
They say the Eskimos have 50 different words for snow but this is apparently a myth. The Swedes certainly have 25 but the top prize must go to the Scots who have had 421. From “Mell-moorin”, a fall of fine, drifting snow to “skelvie“, large flakes of softly falling snow. Now I don’t know what […]
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A misty Coate Moor
“Mist muged on þe mor malt on þe mountez Uch hille hade a hatte a myst hakel huge” Two lines in Middle English from the medieval poem of Arthurian chivalry “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”. Translated it says: The moor was muggy with mist, and the snow melted on the mountains, and each hill […]
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Waldeinsamkeit
A few days ago there was a posting on the village FaceBook page about a new “mindfulness” group being set up. When I enjoy the quiet tranquillity of the woods and moors that are right on our doorstep I find that I’m just a bit sceptical of the desire to find contemplation and peacefulness in […]
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Sowerdale
I read in the proceedings of the Cleveland Naturalists’ Field Club 1903-1904 a hypothesis that at the time of the last ice age a lake existed in Kildale trapped by a great ice sheet, a thousand feet thick, flowing down the Tees valley from Stainmoor Gap. I was aware of such an ice lake in […]
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The art of Kemplah Wood
I seized on an opportunity to be dropped off in Guisborough and run home and, as the weather was dire, decided to stick to the woods and go over my old training grounds. It’s almost thirty years since I lived in Guisborough but while the main forest tracks are the same much has changed under […]
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The Causeway, Stocks Reservoir
The Forest of Bowland is a new area to me. I have an impression of a large tract of land devoid of Public Rights of Way with a reputation for the illegal persecution of birds of prey. Ironic then that the hen harrier is the symbol of this Area of Outstanding National Beauty (AONB). Forest, […]