Category: Cleveland Way
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50 years ago today the Cleveland Way was officially opened …
50 years ago today the Cleveland Way was officially opened to become the second National Trail in England and Wales after the Pennine Way. Starting from Helmsley the route covers a distance of 109 miles along the edge of the Cleveland Hills to Saltburn before heading south along the coast to Filey. So happy birthday,…
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Hummersea Bank
Another vernal day. Parked at Skinningrove and went on an exploration of the Loftus Alum workings. Jogging along the Cleveland Way along Hummersea Bank the dog became agitated at something on the rocks far below. It’s not the first time she has behaved this way and I usually discovered there were seals about. I looked…
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Roseberry Common
A glorious morning on Roseberry. The light overnight snow has highlighted the scars left by 19th century jet mining. The spoil still sterile after all these years. The hard black fossil of the Monkey Puzzle tree has been prized for jewellery since the Bronze Age but it was made fashionable by Queen Victoria after the…
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A few moments later it was snowing
Well, it was white and it was falling from the sky. I’m not sure if the Inuit, with their fifty words for snow, would have one for the snow that fell over Capt. Cook’s Monument early this morning but the Scots do have a nice word flindrikin usually a light, flimsy garment but which was…
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Carr Ridge and Hasty Bank
A menhir or standing stone on Urra Moor right next to the Cleveland Way. I suspect this stone has been erected in modern times simply because I can find no mention of it which I am sure there would be if it was indeed historically significant. As it is it gives a good foreground to…
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Well, there’s good news and there’s bad news
The good news is that it looks like the Traffic Regulation Order restricting off road motorbikes and vehicles from using the medieval trod that climbs Kirby Bank has finally been issued and is in force. The trod was part of a pannierway connecting Rievaulx Abbey in Bilsdale with the River Tees. Off road motorcycles have…
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Park Nab from Percy Rigg
Park Nab, like a sleeping dragon with its breath creeping up the hillside. A dismal forecast. A day for keeping local. Open Space Web-Map builder Code
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Clain Wood
You don’t see that many hangers of beech in North Yorkshire, its soils are too clayey. They don’t like getting their feet wet preferring dry alkaline soils like the chalk hills of Southern England. In the north, beech is considered a non-native species. The Cleveland Way and Coast to Coast footpaths go through this little…
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The Charm Bracelet
I must admit I wasn’t too impressed when this appeared on the Cleveland Way between Saltburn and Skinningrove in the early 1990s but it has grown on me. Some youths in ’96 didn’t like it and they promptly hoyed it over the cliff. Or maybe they just did it for a laugh. I wonder what…
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Capt. Cook’s Monument
250 years ago Lieutenant James Cook was two and a half weeks into his first voyage on board the HMS Endeavour. He was bound for the Pacific Ocean where he was to record the transit of Venus across the Sun in order to devise a method of determining longitude. On September 12th he anchored at…