Author: Fhithich
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Hawthorn Hive
This morning I was surprised that The Guardian’s Country Diary was about Chourdon Point on the Durham coast. Surprised that I just happened to have planned a run along the coastal path passing by this point. After I met up with someone in nearby Dalton. Phil Gates, the writer of the piece, describes “the soporific…
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The Cleveland Dyke
I ‘discovered’ this viewpoint the other day. It nicely illustrates the route of that intrusion of igneous rock known as Cleveland Dyke. The Cleveland Dyke was formed about 59 million years ago when an immense hot spot of pressurised molten magma developed under the Earth’s crust near the island of Mull off the west coast…
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Went for a bimble around the Belmont Ironstone Mine
To be clear this is the old mine, which operated between 1855 and 1877, and not the new one which was sited a kilometre further west and which operated in the first half of the 20th-century. I didn’t really expect to find anything. The authoritative “Catalogue of Cleveland Ironstone Mines” by Peter Tuffs doesn’t mention…
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Back in North Yorkshire and noticeably no rain
One annual ritual about this time is the New Year’s Honours list. Its publication is often met with loathing or apathy, and a pinch of ridicule thrown in. How come Raducanu, aged just 19, can be appointed an MBE, after winning just one Grand Slam title, the US Open (and the BBC Sports Personality of…
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New Year in the Lakes …
… with good friends and great food, and lots of rain. One of these friends is Alice Leon, a young writer from Guisborough. I am honoured she has agreed to write a guest post for me. Scree slopes and waterfalls paint a heavy contrast against the faded patchwork fields of Guisborough, which had become the…
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Grasmere
Although many names with the element ‘gras‘ do derive from the Old Norse for swine or pigs, Grasmere has an Old English origin and means exactly what it says on the tin, a lake of grassland or pasture. One of the prettiest lakes in the Lake District. But also the most popular.
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The smothered hills
Rather strange atmospherics on the moors. On Great Ayton Moor, views were blurred, drifting in and out of clarity. While a flocculent duvet covered the Cleveland Hills. A short while later I encountered the Boxing Day Hunt, a village “tradition” that seems to be in its dying throes. Just a couple of redcoats and a…
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Today is not Boxing Day
Today might be the day after Christmas Day, the second day of Christmas, but it is a Sunday, Christmas Sunday, and so is not Boxing Day. That is tomorrow. So sayest the Oxford English Dictionary, which defines Boxing Day as “the first weekday after Christmas day, observed as a holiday on which postmen, errand boys,…
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Roseberry summit
So here it is merry Christmas, as the song goes. I managed to summit Roseberry before most of the Christmas climbers, and while the sun was shining over Middlesbrough. Thirty minutes or so later I was surrounded by a flurry of snow.
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The season of goodwill? You’re having a laugh…
Just a piece of mindless vandalism. And a merry Christmas to you, you stupid inconsiderate bastards. Nothing more to say.