Category: North York Moors
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Old gate posts, Halliday Slack
A slack is a word frequently found in the names of the very upper tributaries of moorland becks. It’s a northern word for the marshy shallow area between two stretches of rising ground. Yet Halliday Slack is a steep, precipitous gorge in the escarpment of the Cleveland Hills between Kirby and Broughton Banks. Thirty metres…
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Blencathra Mine
An intriguing long sunken pit alongside the Glenderaterra River that’s been conveniently used as a dump for rusting stock fencing. It looks like a waterwheel pit to me and probably used to provide power to pump out the shaft of the Blencathra Lead Mine which was last worked in 1875. This is the southernmost working…
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Belmont Ironstone Mine
The drift entrance to the mine which operated between 1907-1931 although no ore was extracted after 1921. It has been deliberately blocked for public safety. The brick building behind is an electrical sub-station and probably dates from 1914 when an electric sirocco fan was installed to replace the old method of ventilation by lighting a…
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Robin Hoods Butts
The large expanse of heather moorland between Scaling Dam and Danby Beacon is one of the bleakest moors and at its bleakest at the height of the winter. I am reminded of Christina Rossetti’s poem published under the title “A Christmas Carol”: In the bleak mid-winter Frosty wind made moan; Earth stood hard as iron,…
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Codbeck Reservoir
Not much wind this Christmas Day morning. The proverbial millpond. Plenty of folks making use of the perimeter path. Christmas Day, the day most Christians celebrate the birth of Christ. It hasn’t always been celebrated on this date. Prior to the 5th-century when Church leaders agreed to fix the date of the birth of Christ,…
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“Night of the Mothers”
Ah, Christmas Eve. If you were a pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon pagan you would be celebrating “Mōdraniht” tonight or the “Night of the Mothers“. We know this because the venerable Bede wrote it down in the 8th-century. However, he went no further into the traditions and customs but it is speculated that a sacrifice could have been…
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Smart water
Inspired by the humble cloud. Water as pure as the first drop of rain. Northumbrian spring water Vaporised to remove impurities, Then condensed back to … water. With mineral electrolytes added Potassium, calcium and magnesium. Replicating the water cycle. In a bottle of Polyethylene Terephthalate, Light and strong, Perfect for backpacking, Made from 30% of…
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A wet and wild Wainstones
What more is there to say? Perhaps a poem, a sonnet in fact, written in flowery Victorian language but titled quite simply “The Wainstones, Broughton Bank” From early youth, to more than three-score years, I’ve loved to climb the mountain on which stand The rugged WAINSTONES; or on every hand Are scenes of beauty; Cleveland…
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The Cleveland Hills
Not a rare phenomena on the Cleveland Hills but one of my favourites. Typically in the colder months fog in the Bilsdale valley spills over the low points in the hills, Haggs Gate, Garfit Gap and the Lords’ Stone. High above the delicate cirrus clouds portend the advance of a weather front bringing rain. These…
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Nan Scaife o’ Spaunton Moor
“Get you of the skull the bone part of a gibbetted man so much as one ounce which you will dry and grind to a powder until when searced it be as fine as wheatenmeal, this you will put away securely sealed in a glass vial for seven years. You will then about the coming…