Category: North York Moors
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The Cleveland Way at Codhill Plantation
A day for saying farewell to a good friend and a personal reflection on an early walk. Jon Williams was my training partner during those years we both lived in Guisborough during the 1970/80s. Many times we pushed each other across the boggy Codhill Slack on the final climb up to Highcliff Nab. Of course,…
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Brandy Well
John Fairfax-Blakeborough in his 1912 book with “Life in a Yorkshire village” writes: Speaking of superstitions reminds me of a tradition that the water in Brandy Well, half way up Carlton Bank, has most wonderful curative properties, and that a wish made here when drinking, is pretty certain to be fulfilled. The well is by the road side…
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It’s looking a bit black over Bill’s mother’s
So me mam used to say. A Nottinghamshire expression. But who was Bill? Some say Kaiser Wilhelm II. Some say Shakespeare. This was from Carr Ridge, looking like it’s raining over Stokesley. Not sure if this is the shower that drenched me twenty minutes ago or a new one approaching. Open Space Web-Map builder Code
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Whorlton Moor Shooting House
At the beginning of September, a photo did the rounds on FaceBook showing some graffiti on a shooting house purporting to have been done by Extinction Rebellion. This was linked to an article on the website Campaign for Protecting Moorland Communities (C4PMC), a site “dedicated to protecting moorland communities and the driven grouse shooting”. I…
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Not a lot to see, all is still,among the tubes of Cockshaw Hill
It was the National Poetry Day on Thursday, so my pathetic attempt is a bit late. Would it be too pretentious to call it an epigram? Anyway a wet miserable day, but Sunday’s looking better.
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Dub, Great Ayton Moor
A ‘dub‘ is a Northern word for a patch of water, which could be anything from a puddle on a path or road to a pool in a river, deep enough for swimming or a favoured fishing mark. The earliest attestation is in a perambulation of the liberty of Ripon in 1481. Sometimes a stream…
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Hanging Stone
A dash around one of my regular routes before the weather was due to change. Through Newton Wood, up Hanging Stone, and then on to Roseberry. There were the remains of a fire on the Hanging Stone. Folk mulling over the meaning of life gathered around a campfire. An activity which has probably gone on…
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Autumnity
We’re well and truly into autumn, a morning chill, a low sun and a palette of russett and golds. Bracken is a formidable plant. It’s been around since the dinosaurs, with fossil records going back over the last 55 million years. But its success represents a real threat to biodiversity, shading out other plants, producing…
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Nothing to see here …
Just a scene of everyday countryfolk mingling prior to exercising their natural right to kill the red grouse, Lagopus lagopus scotica. The keepers, beaters and general folk of a lower class were mustering out of shot. Grouse shooting has been declared an “organised outdoor sport” or “licensed outdoor physical activity” and as such is exempted…
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Byland Abbey
In its heyday, Byland Abbey ranked alongside Rievaulx and Fountains as one of the three great monasteries of the north. But the Cistercian order from Savigny took 43 years to found a permanent site for their monastery. It began across the Pennines when, in 1134, a community of monks from Furness Abbey set out to…