Category: Gribdale
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Saturday morning in Gribdale
It’s 10:30 on a dreich Saturday morning. Cloud base is about 270m, Roseberry Topping wears a cap, there’s a brisk wind, and it’s mizzling, that light, fine, mist-like rain that nevertheless slowly wets you through. And Gribdale car park is full. Only the odd space remaining. This year, the first lockdown saw a step-change in…
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Remembrance Sunday
Members of the Cleveland Mountain Rescue Team conducted a socially-distanced commemoration at the memorial to the airmen who were killed when a Lockheed Hudson aircraft crashed on Easby Moor in the early hours of 11th February 1940. The aircraft was one of a flight of three which had taken off from Thornaby airfield on a…
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Roseberry from Cockshaw Quarry
What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare. No time to stand beneath the boughs And stare as long as sheep or cows. No time to see, when woods we pass, Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass. No time to see, in broad daylight, Streams full…
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Paddock, Gribdale
I will be the first to admit that I don’t know much about horses. But I do feel sorry for this herd of horses at Gribdale. There must be close to a dozen of them in a smallish muddy field with very little grass. For sure, hay or other feed is obviously being provided but…
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Roseberry through Gribdale Gap
They say the Eskimos have 50 different words for snow but this is apparently a myth. The Swedes certainly have 25 but the top prize must go to the Scots who have had 421. From “Mell-moorin”, a fall of fine, drifting snow to “skelvie“, large flakes of softly falling snow. Now I don’t know what…
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Gribdale Gate
It is nearing that time of the year when a mysterious old man appears at Gribdale and then vanishes. But unfortunately on New Year’s Eve, when he has been seen, I am usually in the Lake District. Richard Blakeborough wrote in his book ‘Wit, Character, Folklore and Customs of the North Riding of Yorkshire‘, printed…
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Sunrise on Cliff Rigg
Two major achievements. First I dragged myself out of the house whilst still dark and secondly, I managed a hypnopompic run up Cliff Rigg, the first since my attempt at an Icarus imitation. They say the darkest hour is before dawn. That’s probably not true once your eyes have become accustomed. Dick Turpin and his…
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Pinch, punch, first of the month …
… and no returns. October, the eighth month of the calendar of Romulus, the first king of Rome. And what a miserable morning. But it had brightened up by the end of the afternoon. A view south-east from Cliff Rigg towards Gribdale and Cockshaw Hill. Open Space Web-Map builder Code
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Gribdale Terrace
An evening stroll up Capt.Cook’s Monument hoping to catch a spectacular sunset. Instead, a diffuse grey blanket gradually smothered the sun. The white cottages of Gribdale Terrace, built for whinstone miners, on the far left overlooked by Roseberry Topping. Open Space Web-Map builder Code
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Ayton Banks Alum Works
A cold, overcast day. The fresh snow of the last few days has aged into a dirty wet surface. I found myself above Gribdale looking down on the heavily worked hillside of Cockshaw where the snow accentuated the contours of the Ayton Banks Alum Works that operated for a mere nine years in the latter…