Tag: snow
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Halfway up the Incline
The halfway gate, good fresh snow and blue skies. Magic. The mile-long incline, maximum gradient 1 in 4½, came into operation in 1861 to transport ore from the Rosedale Ironstone Mines. At the peak of ironstone production 1000-1500 tons was hauled down daily, operations continuing throughout the night. The incline was self acting, that is,…
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The Bones of Winter
Such a wonderful phrase for which I can not claim credit nor provide a quotation, it’s just one of those phrases which I’ve read and has stuck in my mind. And it certainly felt as though winter had been defleshed today on Eweing Knoll, Dromonby Bank. I’m on the jet miners track which contours Cringle…
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Britain’s 23rd Favourite Walk
A disappointing snowfall. Threatening but just a flindrikin. Roseberry Topping wasn’t so much wearing a cap but a grey veil. Didn’t see a soul except for this lone cyclist pushing his bike down the hill. Why? And a gravel bike at that. Roseberry, recently placed 23rd in a ITV list of Britain’s favourite walks. Part…
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Trennet Bank Plantation
Climbing from William Beck Farm. Across Bilsdale the overnight snowfall picks the remains of the Trennet Bank Plantation, an unsightly conifer woodland that was felled by the National Park Authority in 2015/6 under their Trennet Bank Project. The plantation of Sitka spruce and Lodgepole pine dates from the 1970s. It was planted close to the…
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The thaw begins
With the forecast expected to top 11ºc later today the thaw is well and truly underway leaving the tracks of Cliff Rigg Wood a lethal sheet of ice. Apparently, glocken is a Yorkshire term for the thaw, when the snow clears, a word derived from Old Norse. The modern Icelandic word glöggur, to become clear,…
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Round Hill Memorial Shelter
Many of you will know I don’t agree with memorials. Benches, plaques and rock carvings littering the moors. But this one has been tucked away discretely off major paths overlooking Greenhow Botton for 46 years and I didn’t know it existed until very recently. I thought it was a shooting butt at first. A circular,…
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Feeding time at Airy Holme
A busy Sunday morning for the farmer at Aireyholme. Snow makes it difficult for stock to graze and these sheep are likely to be in lamb so it’s doubly important to provide a feed supplement which the farmer is doing by a spreader on the back of his quad choreographing the sheep like the Pied…
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Sunset on Cliff Rigg Quarry
Headed up to Cliff Rigg to view the sunset which sort of fizzled out. The ridge is part of the Cleveland Dyke and is a protrusion of very hard volcanic rock cutting through the surrounding older sedimentary rocks. Formed 58 million years ago from a volcano near the Isle of Mull, it outcrops in many…
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Highcliffe Nab from Percy Rigg
This must be a first. It’s rare that I take a photo from the same spot I’ve used previously but to find myself in exactly the same place on consecutive days is unheard of. So yesterday was a view south-east, today north-east, from Percy Rigg on Great Ayton Moor. Ahead is Highcliffe Nab. The tracks…
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Rivelingdale
240 years ago today, in 1778, Captain James Cook made landfall on the Hawaiian Islands, the first European to do so. Did he pass any thoughts about his younger life in the Cleveland Hills? It’s highly likely that there would have been snow on the moors on that day. England was gripped in the Little…