Author: Fhithich
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Great Crested Grebe
A wander around Hardwick Hall Country Park near Sedgefield. This is not my usual habitat so it was quite refreshing to be so close to the birdlife around the lake. By far the most majestic was this Great Crested Grebe (Podiceps cristatus) in its summer plumage. At least I think it is, my bird identification…
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Dove Crag and Hart Crag
Two mountains, twin peaks, Hart Crag at 2,698′, has its head in the clouds. Dove Crag, at 2,603′, is just about clear. I don’t think I have ever climbed either in their own right. Always on the way to or from Fairfield. And between them, the hanging valley of Houndshope Cove with its scores of…
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Goldrill Beck
The principle “river” in Patterdale between Ullswater and Brotherswater is Goldrill Beck. That’s it there, just right of centre and to the left of the “holiday village” of Hartsop Fold. But compare it to the map, which shows the beck hugging the road, hidden by the trees of low Wood. In the late 18th-century, the…
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High Street’s Roman Road
Or is it? The first reference to a Roman Road over the 828m high fell High Street appeared in a book published in 1814 by John Britton and Edward Wedlake Brayley: ‘The Beauties of England and Wales, Or, Delineations, Topographical, Historical, and Descriptive, of Each County‘. In spite of some Victorian excavations, when nothing conclusive…
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Sandwick from Gowbarrow
A view across Ullswater from the mighty heights of Gowbarrow fell. On the opposite shore, Sandwick lies at the junction of Martindale and Boredale separated by the ridge of Beda Fell. Patches of snow on Rampsgill Head. Martindale once boasted a public house, the Star Inn, now a farm called Cotehow. Dorothy Wordsworth recalls dining…
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A Snowdrift
I can’t claim these are the first snowdrops I’ve seen this year but they are certainly the most impressive. This drift is behind the little church at the head of Bransdale, along a beck with no name. In a month’s time, the bank will be dominated by daffodils, only to be overtaken by bluebells a…
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Witches’ Knickers
A dreich day, witness my photo of Roseberry not quite smothered by mist. ‘Witches’ Knickers’ is an Irish epithet for the poly bags that attach themselves to shrubs and trees, and barbed wire as here on Newton Moor, slowing shredding in the wind. I keep meaning to clean it up but put that fiddly job…
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Dydd Gŵyl Dewi hapus
Well, Spring has sprung, it’s pancake day, and of course it’s St. David’s day, so ‘Dydd Gŵyl Dewi hapus‘ to all you Welsh speakers. As one proverb says ‘March (has) many weathers‘ so it’s not surprising that there are many proverbs foretelling the weather. If we have a wet month, we might say: A wet…
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Ayton Banks Ironstone Mine
I thought I would have a look around the Ayton Banks Ironstone Mine before the summer vegetation growth takes hold, only to find when I got home that I have already posted a photo of the old drift entrance. But that was an eternity ago, in January 2015. Ayton Banks Ironstone Mine was the smallest…
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Nunnington Hall
This National Trust property is tranquilly situated on the banks of the River Rye. Built on the site of a Saxon homestead it’s a place that oozes history. The earliest part of the south-facing house dates from the mid-16th-century but most is 17th-century work carried out for Richard Graham, first Viscount Preston and Master of…