Category: North York Moors
-
Silver birch, Turkey Nab
Perhaps my favourite tree, one of the first trees to recolonise Britain after the ice sheets retreated. It is an opportunist tree, producing hundreds of windblown seeds that are quick to germinate and grow rapidly making it the bain of gamekeepers and foresters alike. Even the National Trust control the tree cover on their moorland…
-
Lagopus lagopus
Ah, the “glorious twelfth”. Nothing much happening on Urra Moor, the cloud was down this morning so I assume any shooting planned would have been cancelled in any case. So this little fella survives another day. I spotted him along Carr Ridge on the edge of the escarpment clucking away. But high on Urra Moor…
-
Ingleby Moor
No excuse but another photo of the purple. It’s that time of the year. Have to make the most of it. The season does not last long. Had a pootle around the upper reaches of Baysdale. This is from the east side of Tidy Brown Hill, overlooking Black Beck, a tributary of Baysdale Beck. In…
-
The Summerhouse Field
A lazy day, tired after Lakeland exertions. I just managed to wander up with the dog to what the family calls the folly field but which the Tithe map of 1847 lists, perhaps not surprisingly, as the Summerhouse Field. By this time the summerhouse had been in existence for about seventy years. The map recorded…
-
Cook’s Crags overlooking Kildale
Named as Ward Nab on the largest scale maps but known affectionately as Cook’s Crags by the climbing community. The ling is blooming nicely, here seen in a more natural setting than the vast swathes of moorland with which it is normally associated. The low lying shrub has been used through the ages as a…
-
Aireyholme Lane
Aireyholme Farm from the south-eastern flank of Roseberry with the Cleveland Hills in the distance. The view is looking down Aireyholme Lane with the course of the old narrow-gauge tramway from the Roseberry Ironstone Mine to its left. Just before the tree, the tramway took a sharp right and headed across the fields to the…
-
Roseberry Crag Rockfall
I heard there had been a rockfall off Roseberry crag while I was on holiday in Scotland so I headed up and took this to try and show. There are several patches of unweathered rock both on the crag face and on the talus below. One block that has come off is directly below the…
-
Is this a bee fly?
I have been told that this is a bee fly, a member of the Bombyliidae family but after looking at hundreds of pictures on the internet I am not so sure. There are 5,200 species of flies in the UK. I guess this one’s wingspan was about a centimetre and docile enough to enable me…
-
Wurzelweg
I keep a to-do list of words which I may find useful. I knew yesterday’s word was in it somewhere and it was while searching for that word that I came across another word that I had completely forgotten about. A word which, upon waking up to rain and low cloud, provided the inspiration for…
-
Holy Well Gill
Another trip onto Whorlton Moor. Second time in three days. I’m always fascinated by Holy Well Gill, an outflow from the glacial lake of Scugdale. Just a bit damp at the thalweg, a German word for the line following the lowest points of a valley. Open Space Web-Map builder Code