Category: North York Moors
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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…
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Esk Valley and Iburndale from Aislaby Moor
Wonderful views of the lower Esk Valley and the wooded Iburndale, but this large sandstone quarry took me by surprise. I had no idea it even existed, hidden from the A171 by woodland. But what connects this quarry with an English diarist, a mole, and the first English colony? According to one report I read…
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Stork House
It’s 2½ years since I was last at Stork House in perhaps the remotest part of Bransdale and decay has continued to creep on. Such neglect seems a real shame but the cost of renovation would be prohibitive, and of course, being a National Trust property, it can not be sold, a condition of its…
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Holly Tree Wall
That holly tree must be at least 35 years old. I remember it being there when I climbed a route on this face on Park Nab. The large flat field left of centre is a former cricket pitch. The Kildale Cricket Club was founded in 1902, and this field was offered to the club by…
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… Plato, they say, could stick it awayHalf a crate of whisky every day …
A colourful contrast to the heather moorland, still largely in its drab winter colours. But the Rhododendron shouldn’t be there, it’s an archaeophyte, and generally considered to be invasive, offering very little to the local ecology. It’s a bit of a mystery how it’s managed to be growing here on Hutton Moor. I don’t think…