Category: North York Moors
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Mesolithic Guisborough
I often stand on a viewpoint and wonder what the landscape before me was like in times past. What did our ancestors, standing on this same spot see? More often, my imagination struggles to extend beyond the past century. A millennium past and it becomes hazy and obscure. Eight millennia, I can only reach in…
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Track To Summer Hill
I’ve lived in the area for almost fifty years and there are still footpaths I’ve never trodden. I’ve known about this Right of Way but I’ve never bothered with it. For me, getting to the start would entail a kilometre or so of road running, it ends abruptly and doesn’t link up with over routes.…
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A tale of two trods
They say that sheep will blindly follow the sheep in front. It’s part of their gregarious instinct. Yet will they follow the exact same route day after day? For surely this sheep-trod has taken many weeks to develope. And if they do, then they must have a terrific terrain memory. It be wrong to…
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Nanny Howe and the Devil’s Court
A view across Kildale from Park Nab to the densely forested Coate Moor. The highest point towards the left is actually Easby Moor with its monument to Capt. Cook but this story is about a Bronze Age barrow hidden amongst the trees on Coate Moor called Nanny Howe. It’s a story about a witch and…
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“Give us our eleven days”
So the story goes when the Gregorian Calendar was introduced and the 3rd September became the 14th, but it may all have been some satire generated by the artist William Hogarth. The phrase is included in his painting ‘An Election Entertainment‘ (bottom right on a black banner under the foot of a gentlemen who appears…
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A vote to ban ‘trail-hunting’ on National Trust land
Regular readers of this blog will know I volunteer for the National Trust on properties on the North York Moors. I do this principally to give something back to an organisation whose values I fully support. I am not fantastically enthused about old houses and gardens, it is conservation and the natural environment that interest…
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Orthostatic walling, Westerdale
An orthostat, in the true sense of the word, is a large upright stone, think of a standing stone or menhir, but one that has been built into a structure or wall. There’s a few in Stonehenge. However, the term has been applied vernacularly to any huge stones that are built into walls such as this…
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Crown End, Westerdale
The rigg separating Westerdale and Baysdale is mapped as Crown Head. That’s it on the right, rising to 236 metres (774 feet) at its highest point. Baysdale is the nearer valley, Westerdale straight ahead. Crown Head is best known as a site of pre-historic remains, representing activity between the Bronze Age and late Iron Age.…
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On this day in 1962 …
… mountaineers Chris Bonington and Ian Clough become the first Britons to conquer the north face of the Eiger. The 13,040 ft. climb took them two days and was one of the fastest ever. Within three hours of reaching the summit they were back in their hotel room. Here’s what the Guardian said in their…
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Here’s a wizard wheeze …
Let’s release a non-native species into the British countryside that will predate on and compete with our native wildlife for the sole purpose that people can kill it. You would have thought Defra would have something to say about it. I am talking of course about pheasants. 47 million of them are released into the…