Author: Fhithich
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Among the Tree Guards of Bransdale
In Bransdale today, work continued among the ranks of tree guards set out over recent winters. The task was to fell the self-seeded conifer saplings that have spread so thickly through this corner of Bloworth Wood. New woodland does not simply grow and look after itself; it demands steady, patient management. From the valley floor,…
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Tidkinhow Moor: A Puzzle Written in Fading Ink
The other day, while wandering the web as one does when sense has taken the afternoon off, I found a digitised photocopy of a 1982 legal decision about Tidkinhow Moor. The page is mottled with foxing, stained by time, and the typewriter ink has faded like an old promise. It looked interesting to say the…
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The Wild Boar of Westmorland
Imagine standing here eight centuries ago in this small tributary of Kentmere. The place feels still now, but once it was no quiet backwater. Here, a family’s fate hung by a thread, and the stakes were as high as the fells around you. At the heart of it stands Richard Gilpin, said to have killed…
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A Pithy Guide to the King Charles III Coast Path
At Marske Sands, a wooden fingerpost points towards Redcar and its turning turbines, as if pointing out the obvious. The King Charles III Coast Path belongs to a 2,700 mile plan to walk round the island, or near enough. It is the sort of stroll that rewards enthusiasm with blisters. You walk north until Scotland…
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Is “Managing” Nature the Right Thing to Do, or Just an Excuse?
It never fails to weary me how interest groups reach for academic work as a drunk reaches for a lamppost, more for support than illumination. A paper appears, and before the ink is dry it is trimmed, polished, and made to serve a house creed. We have seen the trick before, from vaccine doubters to…
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Inheritance and Oblivion on Urra Moor
On the bleak expanse of Urra Moor, a lone boundary stone stands sentinel over the heather. Winter has tried to lay its white shroud over the name FOULIS, once lord of the manor at Ingleby, but hasn’t quite succeded. It reads like a quiet obituary in stone, the record of a family slipping out of…
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From Parish Wall to Prime Minister
Despite the slush and the grey skies, snow lends even the most familiar ground a quiet grandeur. Roseberry Topping, half veiled in white, looks less like a hill and more like a stage set, its lines sharpened and its history briefly made visible. This wall climbing its eastern flank marks the old parish boundary between…
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The Track Through Hall Wood
Hall Wood in Farndale hides a solid, well-made track, the sort that suggests purpose and history. It is said to have led to a sawpit. If so, it kept its secret well today. I found the path, but not the pit. The wood was less forthcoming than the National Trust’s heritage records. Timber once mattered…
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Humps and Bumps: The Ghost of Parva Broctune
Scan this green pasture of Parva Broctune and you will spot the neat ‘S’ of Little Broughton Beck slicing through a quilt of humps and bumps. It looks gentle enough. It is not. Those undulations are the bones of a village. The land keeps its own ledger, and it does not forget. Wind the clock…
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Biodiversity Net Gain: Green Promises, Thin Results
The UK’s Biodiversity Net Gain scheme was meant to be our environmental shield. A simple promise that development would leave habitats “in a measurably better state than they were before.” It is sold as a key tool to halt “catastrophic declines in nature.” Fine words, neatly printed. The proposal to develop an 11.63ha site overlooking…