Category: Hutton Moor

  • Rivelindale

    Rivelindale

    A Public Footpath is mapped between Percy Cross and Highcliffe Farm crossing the vast bog of Sleddale Slack or Rivelindale as referred to in old documents. It is a little used path but there has been some recent cutting of the heather at the Percy Cross end. Across the bog, however, no such luxury, a…

  • Cottongrass, Hutton Moor

    Cottongrass, Hutton Moor

    The cottongrass has been particularly good this year. Large swathes of the fluffy white cotton seedheads. Also known as bog cotton and ghost grass although not strictly a grass. It grows well on damp acidic moorland. The seeds and stems are supposed to be edible with its astringent properties used to treat diarrhoea. Wads of…

  • Eskdale’s stolen water

    Eskdale’s stolen water

    The sandstone boundary stone on the left is inscribed “RC” the initials of Robert Chaloner, the 19th-century landowner and lord of the manor of Guisborough, but it is the waterlogged ditch in front which took my interest today. Mapped as “The Race” it is a leat semi-circumventing Hutton Moor, capturing the water runoff from draining…

  • Hutton Moor

    Hutton Moor

    This stand of larch has always intrigued me. It first appears on the 1952 edition of the Ordnance Survey map, is circular and isolated on the heather moor. It can not be self-seeded. Who planted it? And why?

  • Hutton Moor

    Hutton Moor

    This path across Hutton Moor provides a pleasant alternative from the hard gravel of the parallel forestry track on the other side of the fence. In spite of the heather moorland being Open Access Land the path is frequently used by dog walkers and mountain bikers. It is also a SSSI. A week ago I was running…