Category: North York Moors
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Botton Head
An obscure sandstone outcrop on Carr Ridge of Urra Moor, and overlooking to narrow north-facing valley of Ingleby Botton. The word Botton comes from an Old Scandinavian word ‘Botn’ for a hollow or head of a valley of just this shape, rounded and flat-bottomed. The early surveyors of the Ordnance Survey must have misinterpreted the local…
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Foxgloves – the beginning of high summer
Despite the dreich morning, the foxgloves are a timely reminder that Spring is behind us and we are now at the beginning of high summer. This crop have taken over a cleared plantation on Round Hill near Gribdale, felled a couple of years ago. Along with ox-eye daisies, foxgloves have the largest number of different…
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The Cheviots
Exploring the lower foothills of The Cheviot today. I had set out with the intention of bagging the big one but my mind still thinks I’m four decades younger. And it was a bit warm and I’ve always suffered in the heat. But enough excuses. A remarkably peaceful area ,especially after the coast. I only…
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New memorial on Roseberry
I must admit to feeling some disappointment when I found this wooden cross erected on the summit of Roseberry this morning. It’s some weight and would have been quite a task to carry it up. Even if it’s not intended to be permanent, is it fair to blight the hill for everyone else? And is…
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Lonsdale Quarry
I often end up at this quarry. It avoids a good chunk of the busy gravel track along the escarpment between Gribdale and Little Roseberry. In all the years I think I have only seen anyone else here once – a couple wild camping. Its name appears on the 1853 O.S. map, and is probably…
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Miners’ Bait Table
Has it really been 50 years since the potash mine at Boulby was opened? If so, it was before my time, I was still at uni. I can’t ever remember it not being there. It was certainly controversial at the time. “… the classic battle between the beauty of a national park and the beast…
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Bransdale – Eastside
Bransdale is a idyllic community of scattered farmsteads. It seems to have always been the case. Eastside and Westside were once two separate townships belonging to two separate parishes before they were merge into Bransdale-cum-Farndale in 1873. You would have thought that crime would have been a rare occurrence in this remote dale, but in…
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Greenhow Moor, looking towards the old ironstone mine at Rud Scar
On the 16th June 1814, the stagecoach ‘England Rejoice’ set off from Stockton on bound for Whitby. It was the return leg of a new service offering weekly return trips with York and Stockton. The coach had left the Freemason’s Tavern, Whitby at “exactly” six o’clock on the Monday morning bound for York. The journey…
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A view of Roseberry from Aireyholme
At a quarter past seven on the evening of 15th June 1920, the world-famous soprano Dame Nellie Melba made history by singing across the airwaves in a live broadcast from the Marconi Company’s site in Chelmsford, Essex. Whilst she was not the first person to broadcast her voice, Dame Nellie was the first professional singer,…
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Kirby Bank
Kirby Bank looking luxuriant under a coat of fresh bracken, the bane of the moors. On 14 June 1932, the Daily Mail carried a somewhat brief report: Climbed 41 Peaks in 24 Hours Mr. Robert Graham, of Keswick, Cumberland, has created a 24-hours walking and climbing record in Lakeland by scaling 41 peaks in an…