Tag: nab
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Turkey Nab from Easby Moor
A view across the vale of Cleveland towards Turkey Nab, scarred by the recently graded track that climbs the bank. This is thought to be the start of Thurkirsti, the ancient route across the moors to Kirbymoorside. Thurkirsti does suggest a likely root for the name of ‘Turkey’ and seems more plausible than another explanation…
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A lichen covered Highcliff Nab
I’ve heard my first cuckoo of the year. Cuckoo – an echo of the bird’s call – an onomatopoeia. Words come and go. Some words are just made up – neologisms. Shakespeare was apt to make up words, so was John Milton. In 1667, Milton was blind and impoverished, and it was on this day…
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Potters Ridge
I have not taken a photo from this spot before. Honest. I moved a hundred metres south from Black Nab to be sure. I have often wondered how Potters Ridge got its name. That low 25 metre high prominence behind Highcliff Nab. I think I’ve found out. In 1806, Robert Chaloner, the Lord of the…
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And so, into February – mud, cabbage, cakes, and streaking
February, or as the Venerable Bede wrote ‘Solmonaþ‘ – Mud Month. (The ‘þ‘ is a thorn, a character used in Old English and pronounced similar to ‘th’ apparently. It is also used in modern Icelandic.) The view today is of Highcliff Nab taken from just below Black Nab across the fields of Codhill or Highcliffe…
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Edward Jenner, the pioneer of the smallpox vaccine
Today’s photo is of Ward Nab, or Cook’s Crags, the name by which the climbers know it. It’s on the southern tip of Easby Moor. A completely unrelated fact is that today in 1823 Edward Jenner, the pioneer of the smallpox vaccine, died. He has been referred to as the ‘Father of Immunology’ whose work…
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Park Nab
A sunny evening after a day of rain. This is one of a pair of blue fields flanking Green Gate Lane, better known as the Little Kildale road. The crop is Lacy phacelia or Blue tansy. The photograph has actually rendered the colour less blue than I remember. I am a bit disappointed. Must be…
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Highcliff Nab
“Overhanging the romantic and picturesque vale of Gisborough, a bold prominent rock rears its reverend head, hoary with mosses and lichens, and rent into vast chasms by the storms and tempests of centuries. It is skirted to the north with rich plantations of fir and venerable forests of oak; towards the south it is surrounded…
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Rivelindale
A Public Footpath is mapped between Percy Cross and Highcliffe Farm crossing the vast bog of Sleddale Slack or Rivelindale as referred to in old documents. It is a little used path but there has been some recent cutting of the heather at the Percy Cross end. Across the bog, however, no such luxury, a…
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Play of the Weather
The god of rain took an early lead in the ageless battle to decide the British weather. And as I write this the day ends with the god of wind, Gareth, firmly dominant. This parallel was explored in John Heywood’s “Play of the Weather“: Amidst a mass of bickering, in-fighting, backstabbing and intrigue, the gods…
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Sir Michael Tippett
Today, Sir Michael Tippett, perhaps the leading British composer of the 20th-century, would have been 114 years old. He is most famous for his oratorio ‘A Child of Our Time’, which was inspired by the murder in Paris of a German diplomat in 1938 by a Jewish refugee teenager. The murder led to the attacks…